The Still Point (On a Spinning World)
by AliLamba
Summary: 12 of 13, LoVe / Post-film. Four weeks after he leaves her, Lieutenant Logan Echolls is dead. Veronica dissolves in her grief, because there's more to their story. Far away and unknown to her, the man she loves is not gone, but lost. He wakes up in the middle of nowhere knowing one thing for certain: he needs to get back to her.
1. Chapter 1

**THE STILL POINT (ON A SPINNING WORLD)**, chapter one**  
**by: AliLamba  
rated: T, for adult themes  
notes: I would be surprised if I beat anyone to this plot idea. But it spawned in my head while commuting this morning and I felt the need to see it through for myself.

* * *

Veronica had often wondered how she would feel in this situation.

She frowns, more something to do with her face than out of real emotion. She feels…

Nothing.

Her mind is completely and utterly blank. Maybe that is why she's frowning. She thought this would be a happy occasion. Or at the very least a terrible one. She had imagined how or what she would tell her friends. Or her father.

At Stanford she had once studied shock. The body does this wonderful thing when it's threatened, mentally or physically. Adrenaline and other hormones pump through your bloodstream at otherwise dangerously high levels, making you completely oblivious to how badly you're hurt. She's heard of people being rushed to the hospital laughing and joking with the paramedics who transferred them. The moment they are able to calm down, they collapse and die. They bleed out. Their spleen had been ruptured in a fall, or their aortic artery had been torn and no one thought to check. Kindly, their body had pumped them so full of natural morphine they had no idea they were dying. It was kind of sweet when you thought about it.

Veronica does not feel euphoric. She feels totally numb. In fact, she feels number than numb. She feels…vacuous.

She shelves the situation for now.

Veronica wanders back to her computer and opens her email program. She clicks on the first desperately addressed email she sees.

Four minutes later she realizes she is staring out the bedroom window, her gaze lost in the crashing of waves against the shore outside of Logan's house. She glances back at her computer, and then closes the laptop without a second thought.

Veronica turns and starts to make the bed, pulling the sheets across the mattress and flattening the comforter. She pauses after putting Logan's pillows in place.

A long moment passes, and then she draws her hand along the surface of his pillow. She imagines his head there, turned on its side so he could see her face. So he could smile at her, or kiss her, or make her laugh.

So he could tell her he loves her.

Veronica finds an emotion tugging at her heart. She tilts her head, trying to imagine what the feeling could be. It quickly passes. Self-preservation is kicking in. On a small sigh, Veronica turns and lets gravity drag her body to the freshly made bed. She collapses against the clean linens, letting the springy mattress absorb her weight.

She stares silently at the ceiling, thinking for a long time. At some point she simply drifts off to sleep.

Something wakes her up.

Veronica's eyes blink open. The lighting of the room indicates that it is well around noon, and her clothes feel sticky against her skin. She feels that discomfort that comes from suddenly waking up mid-REM cycle.

A good few disoriented seconds pass while Veronica tries to figure out what woke her up. Then the doorbell rings again.

Veronica stands, fighting through the haze of leaving a dream state. Her stomach feels funny, like someone took a piece out of it and her body is trying to accommodate what's missing. She hates this feeling and it's the reason she very rarely naps.

Grouchily, she wonders where Dick is. It's his house too – technically, it's more his house than hers. But the sun is shining through the clouds hanging over the beach, so she imagines he's in the water. He spends most of his life in the water.

In California, peep holes are replaced by giant panes of glass stuck in the middle of front doors. Logan's front door is more glass than wood. She figures the only person who would ring the doorbell without calling ahead or barging in would be from FedEx, or UPS…

But the person standing on Logan's doorstep is wearing an entirely different uniform.

For an entire, sickening moment, she thinks it's Logan. The person is wearing Logan's Navy whites, and immediately she remembers the last time she saw Logan in the flesh – pausing at the doorway to get one last look at her, bag as big as his torso slung over his shoulder. His look had been so penetrating, so desperate, and it haunts her still. It haunts her now.

But it's not Logan. The floor seems to drop out from under her. Her stomach turns into rock. There is no breath in her lungs.

It's not Logan.

There is only one reason why someone not Logan would be on his doorstep wearing Navy white.

She can't fathom that she's moving, but suddenly she's standing just on the other side of the door, staring at this stranger who has come to meet her through the pane of glass. The door opens in front of her, and she knows that she's the only person who could have opened it. Her entire body feels on fire, feels so tense inside that she can only imagine she's going to do something violent – like explode.

"Hello ma'am," this stranger says. Veronica can't reply. "I'm sorry to bother you ma'am. I'm looking for a Richard Casablancas Junior. Is he here at the moment?"

She sucks in a breath. Richard? _Dick_. No.

"No," she whispers.

The stranger in Logan's clothes ducks his head and mutters _shit_ under his breath. He closes his eyes and clenches his jaw. He is collecting himself. A shake of his head and he looks up at her. "Are you familiar to Lieutenant Logan Echolls?"

Dread starts in her toes, and in the tips of her fingers. Cold, frozen tendrils start to creep in toward her center. She knows the dread is trying to get to her heart.

This stranger must be able to read her expression, because his expression turns serious. She almost wants to call it _grim_.

Dread fills the vacuum in her lungs where oxygen is supposed to be.

She knows why this stranger is here. She has known since she first saw him. She must be dreaming. She must still be asleep. No, there is no way this person is here for the reason she imagines. These things happen to other people. They happen in movies. They don't happen to Veronica Mars. They don't happen to Logan Echolls. They don't happen in Neptune, California.

"I'm very sorry," he says, quite simply. Her entire body freezes. _No_.

"Lieutenant Echolls died yesterday morning at 0618 hours."

_No_.

"He was running a routine mission off of flight deck in the Andaman Sea. There was a malfunction, and his aircraft suffered irreparable damage. He went down twenty miles northwest of the island Kabosa."

The stranger's words enter into her brain and immediately pass right through the holes suddenly peppering her body. She doesn't hear him. She can't hear him. The world is spinning beyond the stranger's body, and her legs feel weak. She wonders – how is she standing? How are her legs pushing her up from the ground? Her eyes look to her feet, and she wonders what these feet do, and who they belong to.

_Died yesterday_.

_Malfunction_.

_Went down_.

This is all a big joke. She looks up at the stranger. Logan must have put him up to it. Logan is coming home early to surprise her, and this is some big funny test to figure out whether or not she's still in love with him. Veronica looks down the walkway at the stranger's car and checks the passenger seat for Logan's familiar smirk.

He's not there.

She realizes – five months early? Logan would come back five months early? No. Not without some sort of phone call, not like this. Her brow furrows. If this is a joke it's a sick one. This stranger isn't welcome here, and his joke isn't funny. Logan's death isn't a funny concept to her. And where the hell is Dick! He is supposed to be here, not Veronica. He's not supposed to spend his whole god-damned day _surfing_. He's supposed to have a fucking _job_ like the rest of the world. In fact – _fuck_ that guy! _Fuck_ Dick for not being there!

She's gripping the handle of the door too tightly. Her fingers are starting to sting she's gripping it so hard. There's no blood left getting to her nail beds, and the skin is starting to prickle, asking for attention in an annoyingly painful way. She loosens her grip and looks back at the stranger wearing the Navy white she recognizes. He is still looking at her somberly. His hat is tucked beneath one of his arms at the elbow. Above it, just in the crook of his arm, is a folded American flag. She remembers what that part of Logan looked like without any clothes to cover it, when her head is looking for a place to rest and her body is within his arms.

Logan can't be dead. There's no way he can be dead. It wouldn't be fair. Let her be dead instead. Let any number of people with cruel souls and black hearts be dead before Logan is. Not Logan, with his deep brown eyes, his pure soul, and the heart that loves her. Not…not the father of her unborn child.

"I'm pregnant," Veronica finally breathes, and she can't believe she's said it out loud.

* * *

The stranger is offering her a glass of water. She is sitting on the couch in Logan's living room, and she feels like there is no blood left in her face, or hands. She imagines how pale she must look, as her limbs run alternately hot and cold with fevers of feeling.

She sees her hands extend to accept the glass. She settles it against her knee and stares at it, seeing it and not seeing it all at once.

The stranger takes the casual chair opposite her. He has been trained to keep a respectful gaze on her face, observing her for movement or reaction. Almost like he is guarding her.

"Thank you," she finally says, long after she has taken the water.

The look of this man is starting to be familiar to her. She notices that he has brown hair and brown eyes. His eyes are lighter than Logan's, and his hair is darker than Logan's, and his face is all wrong…but he wears Logan's uniform, so he must be at least partially trustworthy. He might have known Logan. No – he might _know_ Logan. She is not entirely convinced that this man is telling the truth. She is not convinced that Logan is dead. He quite simply cannot be dead.

"How far along are you?" the man asks casually. She imagines that he must be kind of tired of his job. She would be too, if it was her job to give this sort of terrible, heart-breaking, life-shattering news to people on a daily basis. It must get old after awhile.

"Um," she tries to say. She has no idea how far along she is. Well, that's not entirely true. Logan has been gone for four weeks, so she can only be four to six weeks pregnant. Her heart stammers in her chest. For the first time she thinks of Piz, and New York. Her mind works through the month before she came back to Neptune. She can hardly remember the last time she was intimate with Piz… It had been weeks since they'd made that kind of time for each other before she came back to California for Logan. Weeks, and at least one menstrual cycle. No. This baby was Logan's. It couldn't be anyone else's.

"I'm not sure," she finally admits. Her voice is soft, and hoarse, like she's been crying all day long even though she's yet to shed a tear. "I only found out this morning."

The man nods his head, not giving anything away. Perhaps this is not the first time he's encountered a pregnant partner left behind.

"Can you tell me again what happened?"

She is surprised to hear her own voice do the asking. The man shifts in his seat and looks above Veronica's head, as if recalling the brief he read in the car before walking to Logan's front door.

"Lieutenant Echolls was running a routine flight mission off of USS George H.W. Bush in the Andaman Sea. There was a malfunction with the aircraft undetected by pre-flight checks. His aircraft experienced a small explosion in its left barrel engine at 0616 hours. Mr. Echolls attempted to return to flight deck. Failing that, he attempted to eject. No ejection was recorded or observed by flight crew. Mr. Echolls' aircraft crashed at 0618 Pacific Daylight Time, thirty miles northwest of the island of Kabosa."

"Twenty," Veronica says, correcting him. The man looks at her for a quiet moment.

"Yes," he agrees. "Twenty miles northwest of the island of Kabosa."

Veronica draws in a shuddering breath.

"An immediate search and rescue mission was commissioned. Four by air, seventeen vessels by sea. The mission continued until 0830 Pacific Daylight Time, when Lieutenant Echolls' aircraft was recovered."

A glimmer of hope sparks through her chest. "No body," she infers.

The man looks at her for another breath, but there is a wilt around his eyes. This is the worst part of his job, she can tell. The part where you have to rob a person of all hope.

"No body," he says. "Forensic examination of his aircraft revealed that Lieutenant Echolls had been able to open the hatch and escape his restraints.

"No body was recovered after a seven hour sonar, radar, and dive search of the area. At 2100 hours Burmese local time his time of death was assigned as earlier, on impact."

Veronica looks at the folded flag sitting in the empty chair next to this man. It is so crisp and clean, and so vividly red and deep, perfect blue. She imagines that real hands – no machine – have crafted this flag, and that real hands have folded it. She wonders if the people who made this flag knew what it was for. She wonders whether they had ever received a flag of their own.

"What's your name," she asks, listlessly. The silence is suffocating and she doesn't like it anymore.

The stranger's eyebrows quirk a little. He must not be asked this very often, but often enough not to be terribly surprised. "Matthew," he says. "Matthew Adams."

She nods, accepting his information.

"What's yours?" he asks. She looks up at him, somewhat surprised he doesn't know already considering how many personal details he's told her about Logan's death. Matthew clears his throat.

"Well, I know who you're not. You're not Lieutenant Echolls' sister, who we think is somewhere in Europe. And we know you're not Lieutenant Echolls' brother, who bought a boat four months ago and has been AWOL with his wife ever since."

Veronica is staring at him. There is a dangerous prickle at the back of her eyes.

"And you can't be either of Lieutenant Echolls' parents, who are dead. Lieutenant Echolls has no aunts or uncles, and no cousins of any kind. His family tree is…small."

She imagines what Matthew's day has been like. The only real pressure of his job must be to notify next of kin as quickly as possible, and Logan's next of kin are unreliable to say the least. She does some quick math, and wonders when Matthew was notified of this assignment. It could have been 24 hours ago. Twenty-four hectic hours and now he's finally nearing the end of his mission.

"We only found out about Richard Casablancas Jr. through some old medical records. Lieutenant Echolls chose Mr. Casablancas as an emergency contact two years ago and his records haven't been updated since."

Veronica nods. Her head moves of its own volition. "He lives here," she explains. "He's not here at the moment."

Matthew's lips tighten as he nods again, slowly. He looks at her for a long moment. Veronica's jaw is tight. Her whole body is tight, as if she is holding all of her inner organs together inside her body. If she relaxes, she'll bleed to death.

"I have a few of Lieutenant Echolls' personal belongings. These have been cleared by central command to be released to his next of kin. If you're really pregnant, there would be no one more next of kin than you."

He pulls a clear bag from beside his chair that Veronica hadn't seen before. She wonders what else she's been oblivious to. Veronica reaches out, tentatively, and takes the bag from Matthew's hands. It is not very full. It is certainly not nearly as full as the bag Logan left with, the very same one she helped him pack. Only two things are inside: his wallet, and his cell phone.

She opens the bag on her lap and touches the wallet with her fingers. The black leather is warm and worn in. She imagines it sitting on Matthew's dashboard in his car, absorbing the sun. She picks up Logan's cell phone instead. She touches the screen with her thumb, and the screen blinks into life. It surprises her. The battery is nearly full. That also surprises her. But nothing is quite so surprising as her own face reflecting back at her. It's the photo that Logan had taken on their last morning together, when she was still half-asleep in the pre-dawn light.

She was pregnant then, and she didn't even know it. She is pregnant now. It suddenly feels more real than it did this morning. She should tell her dad. She should tell…

Logan.

Everything inside her chest clenches tightly, and Veronica tries desperately to hold onto control.

"This is me," she tells Matthew, showing him the lock screen on Logan's phone. Matthew squints at it, and she believes him when he looks like he hadn't taken a second glance at Logan's belongings before handing them over. Matthew nods when he recognizes her.

There is a silence, and Veronica prays that he will say something. Something is clawing at her insides, trying to escape her vicious grip of control. It is so much harder to control when Matthew is silent.

"What happens now?" she finally says, and her voice trembles for the first time since Matthew arrived. For the first time since Logan left four long weeks ago.

Matthew takes a steadying breath. She wonders if it was meant to be a yawn, but he was able to control the instinct in his throat. She hates him. No she doesn't. She wants to.

"The official report is still ongoing. It will likely be ongoing for several weeks, as Lieutenant Echolls' aircraft is run through some rather extensive logistical tests. People will be interviewed, statements will be collected, and eventually enough paperwork will be processed for you to receive free healthcare for your child for the rest of his or her life."

An instinct shoots through Veronica's arm. She feels the urge to put a hand to her abdomen. She controls it. Matthew continues.

"Because he died at sea, it is likely that Lieutenant Echolls' body will never be recovered. After the final report is completed, Lieutenant Echolls will be assigned a plot in a naval burial ground. You and Lieutenant Echolls' siblings will have an opportunity to make final arrangements when the time comes. But this is where I have to warn you that it might take awhile. Because of the circumstances of Lieutenant Echolls' death there will be some people who will want to spend a good amount of time getting to the cause. They're not going to want to put this to bed right away."

_The circumstances of Logan's death._

Logan's death. Logan is dead. A hysterical laugh threatens her throat because it is so absurdly awful. She is sitting inside Logan's house, pregnant with Logan's child, and now this man she doesn't really know is telling her that Logan is no longer of this earth.

She wants to laugh. She wants so desperately to cry. And more than anything she wants to keep it all together and go to sleep, so she can wake up from this nightmare. Her hands are shaking. She's not sure when they started to, but the glass of water is now trembling against her knee and she has to put it down. When she tries to put it on the coffee table it falls from her hands, or she drops it – she's not sure, but the sound of the water spilling is violent to her ears.

Matthew stands to clean it up, and Veronica stands too. Not to pick up the glass, but to escape. She darts to the closest bathroom and slams the door behind herself, collapsing immediately to the cold tile floor. Her body is shaking erratically and uncontrollably all over, and she observes her hands without feeling. Her teeth start to chatter inside her mouth, and again she thinks back to her studies of shock. This is the second stage, the time when the body has depleted all its energy and can no longer fight back against its injuries. This is the last stand, the final surge against death, and even the body knows it has lost control.

The tears erupt from her body before she can fully find a place to lie down, her shoulders wracked with the most violent shaking. Her legs extend on the tiled ground like they're made of cheap rubber. Her mouth is wet and uncontrollably open, and she hears a howl. It must be coming from her, but she has never heard a sound like that come from her mouth. Not even when she thought her father had died. Maybe because Logan had been there with her then, and in no possible way could Logan be there to comfort her now. Logan is gone. He is dead. Her lungs and throat wail from within, and her whole body caves with the knowledge that he is not on a boat somewhere counting down from one hundred and fifty-two.

It's not fair, she moans, not knowing whether it is out loud or within her head. It's not fair that they had only two weeks together and they will never be together again. She cries, and cries, and cries. She cries until she feels dead herself, until she feels nothing at all, and until she cannot conceptualize life in any sense.

* * *

The next sixteen hours are like a movie. Surely, the life Veronica sees cannot be her own.

When the bathroom door opens Matthew is not alone. Dick is standing in front of him, looking scared, tears collected around his eyes. He pulls her upright, and carries her to Logan's bed. He sits next to her on the mattress, as if by proximity he won't have to go through his sudden onset of grief alone. Veronica is no better than a body bag. Her heart still beats but she is nothing besides. Matthew only stays until Dick can pull it together and call Mac, and Wallace, and Keith. Mac finds the pregnancy test at some point, the one Veronica had put on the shelf in the bathroom off of her and Logan's room.

Her dad loses it when he sees the blue stick, shouting at her like only a terrified father can for his only daughter. Veronica observes him impassively, her ears and mind so fogged that his words sound like they're traveling through three feet of water…muffled, warped, like his concerns are not real.

At some point she falls asleep again. She wakes up, and it's dark outside. A light is on in the room, and Veronica blinks so she can see throughout the bedroom without squinting. Wallace is on the floor beside her half of the bed. Mac sleeps behind her on the mattress like another bookend, taking up Logan's pillows. She turns to look into the far corner of the room, and finds her dad upright in a chair, asleep himself.

The room almost feels peaceful. It would have been if Veronica had been capable of feeling peace. Instead it just feels…overstuffed, like these people have invaded her privacy.

She sits up quietly and puts her feet on the floor. Wallace shifts in his sleep but doesn't wake, his elbow inches from her toes. Veronica waits for a small moment and then stands, stepping over his body cautiously and walking toward the door. She has no idea where Dick is. She conceptualizes that he is likely inside his own room and not seeking company. She doesn't want to be anyone's company anyway.

A voracious hunger suddenly erupts in her belly. It is shocking if only because it is the first and only real feeling she has experienced since the onset of her grief, and it is so strong a hunger she almost doubles over under its power. She struggles to get to the kitchen before she collapses, grabbing a box of cereal from the counter and shoving a handful of mixed granola and corn flakes into her mouth. She has to put another into her mouth before her stomach registers that it no longer needs to consume itself. A third before she can stand comfortably erect. She fills a glass with tap water and drinks the entire amount in one long series of gulps. She refills the glass, and drinks another half before her throat no longer feels dry and cracked, and her body gives any sort of indication that it has met bodily requirements.

She looks around the kitchen listlessly. The house suddenly feels claustrophobic. It is filled with too many people, and none of them are Logan.

She picks up the box of cereal and lets it hang limply by her side, as her arm is too weak to hold it up against her chest. She walks toward the backdoor leading to the beach, her feet dragging and clumsy against the floor. The door is not locked. It is never locked. It opens with a soft _click_, and a gust of cool, salty wind rushes into her face. It tangles in her hair and fills her nostrils. She waits for it to abate before she ventures out. The sand is cold beneath her feet, but not cold enough for Veronica to care. Her body craves impulsivity, it craves some excitable form of release, because all of her anguish is roiling around inside of her and fighting to get out. For now, the deadness inside her soul is winning, her misery a mere twinge that pulses to life every so often. She finds a place to sit because eventually her legs can't carry her any more. The ocean is in front of her, and it seems as if she has made it barely halfway to the water's edge. The box of cereal sits idly at her hip, and over the course of the next few hours, she snacks on it slowly as the inky blackness of night turns to the deep gray of pre-dawn. The sun rises from behind her because she faces the west. It has barely brightened the day enough for the city's night lights to go out when she is found.

Her dad is walking at what could be a normal pace, but he is breathing so deeply and frantically that she knows he had been scared for awhile that he lost her. She wishes she cared enough to be sorry, or cared enough to be happy to see him. It takes so much of her energy to maintain her grief, however, that she feels barely more than numb.

"Hi dad," she says, and immediately she regrets using her voice. Tears spill from her eyes and over her cheeks, and she knows instantly there will be no controlling them. Her dad takes the seat next to her on the beach, facing west, and he looks more annoyed than anything else. The feeling of a knife twists in her gut.

"Hi Veronica," he says back. His voice is not sad or mournful or soft. He never really knew Logan as she knew him, and he will now never get the chance to love him in the way that she did. In the way that she does. He is dealing with this situation in the way he knows how, and she imagines how frustrated he must feel seeing how distant and distraught his daughter is. He must feel helpless, she observes emotionlessly. Tears still soak her cheeks, and for a long time the tears continue to fall. At one point, she tilts her head so that it rests softly on her father's shoulder. The tears run down her neck and soak the neckline of her blouse, making Veronica realize that she hasn't changed since the morning before, and that her clothes are still uncomfortable and overly warm against her skin. She feels the instinct to walk into the ocean, and to perhaps never come out. She feels the urge to walk into this void in every part of her body. The ocean calls to her with every wave against the shore.

Veronica begins to sob openly, and again her shoulders convulse against the weight of her grief. Her body craves an end to her sadness, anything. She curves toward her father's warmth, and throws her arm around him.

"Daddy!" she cries as she feels his arms tighten around her upper body, clinging her to his chest like the child of his she is.

* * *

He hears the sound of the waves before he can really conceptualize where the sound is coming from. He can't open his eyes, he's so tired, until a swell of ocean water rushes beneath his body and carries him up the sloping shore beneath him. The panic of feeling so helpless and weak pulls his muscles into action, and he scrambles as the water pushes him onto sand at higher ground and leaves him there.

He cannot stand. His muscles are too weak.

Sun is beating onto the back of his neck from high in the sky. So high he can imagine that the time is somewhere around noon. So high that he can only imagine the sun has been slowly burning him for days.

He has just enough power to push himself onto his back. He gasps in free air, his lungs hungry for it. He feels as though he has just woken from death. His mind is so blank. Sun is blinding…ocean rough against his raw skin…sand rubbing into each and every wound…so weak…

He blacks out again. When he comes back the sun is low in the sky.

Logan is not sure what has woken him this time. His muscles feel so heavy and sore; it is painful to move his head toward a sound.

There is someone there. Someone is shouting at him using words he does not understand. He tries to stand, but his arms do not support his weight, and he falls. His open mouth hits the beach, and wet sand pushes past his lips. He has no energy to wipe it away. The blackness is coming back, and this time he recognizes the signs. He tries to fight it as the person comes closer, and he sees the bare outline of their face beneath a straw hat. It is a man. Logan knows he needs this man's help.

A sound comes from his throat. It is raspy, soft, and weak – just like the rest of him. This man with the straw hat leans down beside him, and it is his eyes that Lieutenant Logan Echolls last see before oblivion is able to claim him once more.

* * *

**TBC.**

**I'm going to call this a teaser. Too often I've started a long fic and posted as I went, only to never finish it because I get too obsessed with a deadline and not with the story itself. So I'm going to try to not read any reviews unless I really lose steam, and just dive in and write and write and write until I feel like it's done. Bah! In any case, please drop a note if you have the time. I really really appreciate any comments. **


	2. Chapter 2

**THE STILL POINT (ON A SPINNING WORLD)**, chapter two  
by: AliLamba  
rated: T, for adult themes  
notes: Thank you so much for reading my silly story, and being so kind. I think writers must spend a lot of time concerned that what they're trying to do with their stories won't translate to a reader (at least that's very true for me). So I loved reading your responses. I loved reading from the reviewers who've also experienced grief in their life, and from the ones who were surprised by Logan's survival. I loved reading all of them, and I wanted to say that it means a lot to me.

* * *

Veronica holds her fingertips against her mouth, alternately massaging her lips and biting her fingernails. Three days ago her life lost meaning. Three days ago she lost everything. Her insides feel empty, and she spends so much time distracted by her fog of memories and miseries that she still wonders how she is able to recognize the people around her.

Wallace, Mac and her dad have moved into Logan's house, setting up camp as Veronica has found herself unable to leave. No one besides Dick appears to know yet what has happened to Logan. But no one has seen Dick in two days anyway, so it's anyone's guess who in the world knows of Logan Echolls' passing.

She thinks someone has told Logan's sister. She's not really sure. She really doesn't find it within herself to care.

Veronica's dad grabs her hand, jolting Veronica back to the present. The past few hours have been tearless, which means they have been inert. It's probably how she agreed to this errand in the first place.

"Veronica Mars?" a woman says, opening the small room's door with a manila folder in hand. Veronica drops the hand from her mouth and smooths it against the modesty drape covering the lower half of her body.

"Yeah," she says, her voice sounding rough. "That's me."

The woman smiles kindly, and then smiles at Veronica's dad. "And this is dad?" she asks, politely.

Keith responds for both of them. "Her dad." He clarifies by nodding in Veronica's direction, smiling politely back at this presumptuous stranger. Veronica knows that he is still struggling to come to terms with what is happening to his only daughter. Veronica is still struggling herself. Two weeks with someone after nine long years shouldn't be enough for life-long ramifications, even if the someone you spend it with has been a part of your life since you were twelve. When Mac set up this appointment it had surprised both of them.

The physician puts the folder onto the counter as she washes her hands with antiseptic gel and gloves up, still reading. "It says here you're only about four to six weeks along."

Veronica silently stops breathing, and there is no good reason why. Grief is such a funny thing. It is like the contents of Pandora's Box; once released, it consumes everything. The owner of grief spends all their time trying to keep the box closed, and fighting the unpredictable triggers that make it leak open.

Veronica's hands tighten slowly. Her dad grips her left hand back equally hard. It is the only thing that keeps her from drifting away.

"We think so," Keith answers for his daughter. The doctor throws a quick glance at the two of them. She has sensed that this is not a typical appointment, and she is adjusting her demeanor as she takes an extra four seconds to scan Veronica's chart. When she turns back her expression is more professional than politely excited. Veronica senses that the doctor is trying hard not to make rash judgments about her patient.

"Well let's take a look then," she says, her voice quieter and more serious than before. Veronica watches her flatly as the woman sets up the necessary equipment. She watches the woman's mouth open and close as she explains the procedure, and then watches the woman's hands as the doctor directs Veronica's legs, hips and feet into the appropriate position. Veronica watches the woman's eyes as she inserts something cold and foreign inside her body.

She feels nothing.

Veronica sighs quietly and turns her head to look at her father. His focus is on the screen on the opposite side of his daughter's head, and he squints to see it clearly. Veronica feels totally lifeless, observing his expression as he concentrates on what the doctor is looking for. After an uncomfortable minute, the equipment inside of her stops, and the muscles of her dad's face go slack.

Veronica turns back to the screen, and finds a mural of blacks, whites and grays. She has no idea what is drawing so much attention, but the obvious choice would be the small, oblong black spot in the middle of the screen. It looks like an olive. It looks like a hole.

It means nothing to her.

"That's it," says the woman between her legs. "That's your baby."

Veronica brings her free hand back to her mouth. She chews on her thumbnail, then rubs her fingers along her lips. It is a nervous habit, and she wonders how long she's been doing it. Her head settles back against the faux leather headrest. She tries to pretend she's still interested in seeing the scan, for her dad's sake, and the doctor's sake, because they both seem to be so entranced.

The rest of the appointment goes by in a blur. The timeline is confirmed; the physician estimates she is no more than five weeks along. The baby is Logan's. Veronica is handed pamphlets in every color, with both excited young women and pensive young women on their covers. Veronica is sure the physician is anticipating that her patient will want to terminate the pregnancy. They make no decisions, but the physician gives Keith the print out from Veronica's ultrasound, showing the black spot inside of her and reading 5w0d across the top in small print.

They ride back to Logan's house in silence.

Veronica showers when they get home, and when she comes back into the common room, she finds Mac, Wallace and her dad all cradled over the picture she brought back from the doctor's. They are smiling at the picture and at each other. Veronica is not sure which of them surprises her more. Mac, who has declared for years that she hates kids and never wants to have any of her own; Wallace, who fights so hard and has been through so much…or her dad. The same dad who claimed to have never liked Logan all that much. The same dad who had harassed her and Piz for sharing a bedroom the last time the two of them had seen each other in person.

If she wasn't so tired she might be sad, feeling as removed as she does from the three of them. Instead she almost feels angry. Have they forgotten what is really important here? No, in fact, she does feel annoyed.

"Are you kidding me?" she suddenly shouts, and the way the three of them jump it's clear that none of them noticed she'd entered the room.

"Logan is _dead!_" she screams at them. "He's _dead!_ And all you care about is a stupid – a freaking _fetus?_" She crosses the room furiously, her feet stamping on the hardwood and carpet. She rips the picture out of Wallace's hands. "This is _nothing!_" she yells, her voice hysterical. "_This means nothing to me!_"

She crushes the picture inside her fist as she turns and retreats, tossing the photo on the ground as she escapes into Logan's room and slams the door behind her.

Grief explodes, raw and hungry, inside her chest again. She wants to cry so badly she is gasping with the effort to breathe at the same time. _How can they not see? How can they see that nothing matters anymore! _This thing inside of her feels like nothing. Its presence feels like nothing to her.

_Nothing._

_Nothing._

_Nothing!_

Veronica succumbs to gravity as the fight leaves her for the day. She sobs against the wooden floor for what feels like hours, until there is nothing left inside.

* * *

She doesn't know why, but she doesn't fall asleep. When her brain peters out from its sadness and she just stays limply on the floor, her eyes tracing over the pattern of wood beneath her head in an effort not to think.

There is a knock on the door behind her.

"Veronica?"

It is Mac's soft voice, and to her ears it sounds meek at best. Veronica bites her lip and fights a feeling of guilt.

The door pushes open uninvited, and moves until it runs into Veronica's feet. Mac puts her head inside the gap she's made and locates her friend on the floor. Veronica feels too weak to move out of the way.

She's not sure how her friend made it in, but suddenly Mac is within Veronica's sights. She takes a seat on the floor next to Veronica, her back resting on the side of the bed. Mac sighs through her nose, and looks elsewhere.

Veronica remembers a story one of her Columbia law classmates had told in a bar. This drunk idiot from Montana had started bragging about all the wild wolves he'd trained while hiking in "backcountry". He'd talked about how you don't look them in the eye right away. As you make your way close enough, you gotta be careful not to look them in the eye, or talk to them, or face them all the way; otherwise they'll immediately sense that you're a threat. Then when you're in sprinting distance, and the animal gets comfortable with your presence…you stare the wolf right in the eyes, and pounce.

Veronica cringes and turns over on the floor. She feels her friend's stare on the back of her head, and then hears Mac sigh again.

"You hungry?" Mac finally says. Veronica doesn't respond. "Your dad made manicotti. Don't ask me how."

Veronica recognizes a long-dead instinct to smile reflexively at her friend's playful tone of voice. Then she feels immediately seized with guilt. How can she allow herself to be happy at all? It isn't fair to Logan, it isn't fair to his memory for her to be happy.

Sometime in the last seventy-two hours it has occurred to her how violent his death was. She imagined the terror of having something go wrong in the air, the panic of trying to remember his training as the world is blazing around him. She imagined him trying to figure out how to save his own life.

She imagined what it must have been like, plunging into the water, fighting his way out…only to succumb to the sea. She cannot conceptualize a worse death for someone, because death by drowning is never short and sweet. It is desperate and terrifying. Flashes of Logan's face frightened to death underwater haunt her every waking hour.

When Veronica sits down at the table a few minutes later, everyone is quiet. Wallace, Keith and Mac take their seats at Logan's table and each focus on their food rather than look at Veronica. That's fine with her. She takes a moment to look around the room for Dick, but then remembers that she hasn't seen him in awhile.

"Where's Dick?"

She's surprised that she asked.

Wallace moves like he's going to speak. He swallows a mouthful of cheese and pasta and more or less meets her eyes.

"I ran into him on my way to school two days ago. He was filling up his jeep with surfing gear and a big backpacking backpack. Said he was going to Mexico for awhile to 'black out and put a baby in someone'."

An affection for Dick, and an amount of humor make her want to smile again. The feeling almost make it to the muscles controlling her lips.

"You know, all the typical life-affirming stuff," Wallace jokes with a smile, and everyone else at the table laughs softly at Dick's expense.

Suddenly Veronica remembers that there is a baby in her already. She looks down at her stomach. She can't believe she forgot.

Veronica shakes off the feeling and picks up her fork. The finer spices of the meal her dad prepared are lost on Veronica, as she takes small measured bites to fill her stomach.

After four minutes working so hard to eat in silence, she can't eat anymore. Her fork hits the plate with a _clang_ and she pushes the rest of the meal away.

"Hey," her dad says, and Veronica is surprised by his playful tone and playful smile. "You're eating for two over there."

She doesn't know why, but a look of horror twists her face before she can stop it. It is so infuriating that all of these people who love her can be so cavalier about Logan's death, just because she is knocked up with his baby? She hates the idea that her situation could be a happy one.

She wants to yell at him again, scream at the rest of them for smiling at Keith's affectionate joke. It is obvious they all support her, and are happy for her. Veronica feels so completely the opposite.

"I don't even know if I'm keeping it," she says clearly, and a silence descends so swift and deep at the table that Veronica struggles to breathe.

A part of her had just wanted to shut her dad up.

Though it's true – she has no idea what to do with this dark spot inside of her. When she stops to imagine how it is growing in there, taking over her abdomen…using her blood, making her organs shift and take on functions that they never needed before… Those thoughts make her squirm. She is not so attached to this thing as she was to Logan, and she is too bitterly realistic to pretend that this child could take his place. This baby is not the man she loves, the man she lost. This baby will not bring Logan back to her.

She has never really had any desire to be a mother, anyway. She thought that if she was ever going to have a kid it would be with a partner who wanted one more than she did, and that somehow by seeing her partner so happy she would love their baby too.

Logan would never know about this baby. He would never see its face, or feel its fingers. He wouldn't be there when the baby crawled, or walked, or said its first words… He wouldn't be there when the baby cried all night long and Veronica was so hopelessly sad that she could do nothing to comfort it.

A part of her is terrified that if she kept it, she would hate this child. She would hate it for not being Logan, and for being such a cruel reminder that he was not there with her.

So no, she hasn't made up her mind yet.

"Veronica…" Mac says, and the brunette's voice is sad for her friend. There is nothing else to say. Veronica can see that these three people are fighting their own battles: to be supportive, to be impartial, or to not be horrified at the thought she might destroy a tiny olive. They are already attached, likely swept up in the romanticism of it all.

Veronica feels sick. She pushes back from the table and stands, taking her plate to the kitchen and dropping it roughly inside the sink.

"I'm going out," she says loud enough for them to hear, and before they can object Veronica grabs the keys to Logan's car off the counter and stuffs her feet into someone's sandals. She almost skips out the door, then runs for the car. Veronica watches the front door as she turns the engine over, preparing to peel off if any of the people inside try to stop her. But no one comes after her, and with a small frown, Veronica shifts the car into gear and turns onto the street.

She takes the long way home. Or rather…she just drives. She drives, and drives and drives. She finds herself driving down the coast to Mexico, but doesn't really realize it until she runs into San Diego.

Veronica pulls off the highway to put gas in the car, wondering if she wants enough to get to Tijuana or to go back home. After she parks at a pump and puts Logan's car into park, she realizes she doesn't have a wallet on her. She has no money at all.

Veronica swears loudly, gripping the steering wheel like it's all the steering wheel's fault. She flips open the compartments inside the car, looking for loose change. She doesn't want to have to rely on anyone right now, not more than she has already. The idea of having to call someone to pick her up is nauseating.

She finds a crumpled ten dollar bill in the compartment between the front seats, along with some ones and a few coins. She looks at the receipt folded with the cash, and discovers that she bought a burrito during a stakeout two weeks ago and forgot to put the change back into her wallet. Veronica sighs with relief and leans back into the car seat, closing her eyes as her breathing slows to a normal rhythm.

Fate has chosen option B. There's no way fourteen dollars and sixty-eight cents can take her on a tour through Mexico. It'll be a stretch to get her through the forty-minute drive home.

* * *

Well after curfew, when Veronica walks through the front door to Logan's house, she's not terribly surprised to see the lights in the common room blazing.

Mac is sitting on the floor between the couch and the coffee table, using the space reserved for magazines and oversized books about classic cars as her low-rising desk. Wallace has turned the dining room table into his own private office, and he wears his reading glasses as he pours over a stack of papers with a red pen. Her dad is asleep in a chair, his mouth hanging open and an open book propped against his stomach. Wallace and Mac look up at her when she makes her appearance.

"I'm surprised you guys are still up," Veronica admits. Mac smiles sadly at her. In any other circumstance her friend might have said something snarky, like _no rest for the wicked_.

"How're you feeling?" Mac says instead.

Veronica cringes inside. _What a stupid question_. "Not great," she says instead. There is a pause, as everyone adjusts to having Veronica in the room.

"Let's go for a walk," Mac suggests, breaking through the silence by snapping her laptop shut. Keith jumps in his seat but doesn't wake up, shifting his weight in the chair and drifting back into dreamland.

Veronica finds herself walking on the sand barefoot next to Wallace and Mac. She left her shoes by the house. The three of them make their way silently toward the ocean, the wind whipping through their clothes and moonlight lighting their way. When they are close enough to the water's edge to see for a long ways in either direction, Mac takes a seat and digs her toes into the sand. Wallace and Veronica do the same on either side of her.

They sit in silence for awhile, watching the ocean crash on the shore in front of them, thirty feet away.

"So you're definitely knocked up, huh," Mac says. Her tone is quiet, but not terribly serious. Mac doesn't deal with trauma very well.

Veronica sighs. "Definitely."

"And it's definitely Logan's?"

A lump, raw and ragged, sticks in Veronica's throat. She nods, mutely. The three of them absorb the information for awhile. Finally Mac breaks the silence with a flat voice.

"You know you would regret it forever if you didn't keep it, right."

Veronica's attention is drawn by the sudden movement Wallace makes. He's making a twisted expression like he can't believe they're even talking about not keeping the baby, but he's fighting really hard to remain impassive and supportive by keeping totally silent. Mac sees where Veronica looks, and she shrugs Wallace off with exasperation.

"Veronica," she says, sounding only slightly annoyed, "it's totally your choice, okay? Wallace here isn't pregnant. I'm not pregnant. You're the one who's pregnant, and you're the only person who can decide what to do about it. But Logan is dead. He is totally gone, and there's nothing you can do about it.

She takes a short moment to pause as she stares deeply into Veronica's eyes, trying to show how much she cares. "And inside of you there is a tiny pod of Logan's stupid DNA swimming around, and you just – you need to be _really_, _really_ sure that you want to get rid of that."

Mac's eyes are wide, serious eyes, compelling Veronica to listen. "You need to be really sure that you're ready to say good bye."

Veronica feels the tears well up in her eyes, and she fights desperately not to cry in front of her friends. She has cried so much already. The skin on her face is raw with so much exposure to her own salt water.

"It's just – " she tries to explain. "It's just not that simple, okay." Her voice is pathetically weak sounding, her frustration leaking through. Tears spill over her cheeks, and she clenches her jaw to make them stop. She is so mad at herself for not being able to control them.

"How can I possibly do this—" She grits her teeth, and forces herself to say the word she cannot acknowledge inside her head – "_alone_."

Mac takes a big, deep, cleansing sigh, as if some of her suspicions have just been confirmed.

"But you're not alone, Veronica Mars." Veronica looks at her friend, her face already soaked again with tears. Mac looks tired. "You've got your dad. You've got me. You've got this total freaking idiot right here." She jerks her head in Wallace's direction. "Hell, even Cliff could babysit."

Veronica knows she shouldn't be capable of it, but a quiet shout of laughter breaks past the lump in her throat.

"C'mon, Veronica," Mac pleads reasonably, and Veronica brings her attention back to Mac's face. "You know what you really want to do. All our feminist ideals aside, you know in this situation what is right and what is easy, and that they are totally not the same thing.

"But you're a marshmallow, remember?"

Veronica can't help it. She can't help breaking down for the second time that day, because Mac is right. Mac has spoken all that Veronica knew already, and it just sucks so much that someone else is able to say it out loud because it means the most painful decision in her life has already been made.

Mac slings her arm over Veronica's shoulders, and Veronica lets her friend hold her in a loose, comforting half-hug as they all focus again on the ocean.

Eventually Veronica's sobs quiet down. Her friends let her finish crying, and then let themselves be silent for a long moment so Veronica can recuperate.

Finally, Veronica sighs, a raw, ragged, cleansing sigh.

"I guess we're having a baby," she says, and she can hear her friends smile though she cannot turn to look at them. Mac squeezes her tighter, and Wallace leaps to his feet and throws his fist up, releasing a _whoop!_ sound into the air.

Veronica can't help it. She smiles too. She smiles for Logan.

* * *

Logan does not know what time it is. When he opens his eyes, it is dark out, and he can hear the sound of rain far away. Or not so far away.

Logan springs to a seated position. He has no idea where he is. There is a straw hut surrounding him, and he is sitting on a straw mattress covered by a coarse sheet. He swings his legs over the side of the bed silently. The floor beneath his bare feet is made of wood, and as he tests his weight on it, it makes a terrible creaking sound.

He looks across the room, and realizes that he is not alone. On another mattress in another corner are at least three bodies outlined by the very limited light. Each of the bodies are fully clothed, with no blanket to cover them. A man, a woman, and a child – potentially _children_ – are all tangled together, breathing peacefully, looking so comfortable that Logan infers that it is common practice to share a single family bed. Logan loses part of his feeling of imminent danger. Just a small part. He glances down at himself. Someone has dressed him in an old, stained, and overly large t-shirt. He wears loose shorts that were very likely pants at some point, a rough hem of fringe touching his knees. Logan tests the floorboards again, and again they _creak_ under his toes.

An eye opens across the room. Logan immediately sees it, his eyes focusing on this other person instantly.

A man's head leans up on the muscles of his neck. He looks at Logan passively, and without emotion. His hand lifts. It is not holding a gun. It is an empty hand, and it lays flat, parallel to the ground. This man waves his hand down twice, slowly, trying to get his point across that Logan should lie back down and sleep.

Logan's hands tighten against the mattress on either side of his hips. He shouldn't be there, he thinks. There is a panicked moment where Logan weighs his options. He could bolt. He could potentially be a prisoner. But this man does not look like he wants to or could hold Logan against his will.

Logan fights the desperate need to escape. Rain is pattering all around outside this shelter, but for all he knows the shelter could be in hell. He could be dreaming.

The man leans his head back down, and he hides behind his family. Logan wonders when he decided that this group of people was a family. Someone else moves in the group; this time, it is a child who rolls silently onto their back. Logan feels his entire body tense. The child must be no more than eight years old, and he is deeply asleep. A sigh escapes from his small mouth, his small chest rising and falling softly.

Logan lies back down and stares up at the ceiling, hearing rain splatter on the thatched roof above his head. His head hurts. He suddenly realizes that his head is full of searing fire, and Logan recoils as the pain shoots through him. He lets the pain take control for exactly three seconds. Three…two…one.

He opens his eyes and fights against the pain, trying to focus instead on any memories of getting to this hut that might rattle around his brain.

He remembers…he remembers…something. He remembers being in the ocean, and being pushed onto the sand. _Oh no_. He remembers the explosion.

His breathing erupts rapidly as he relives the plane crash. Something on the control panel had grabbed his attention not a whole two minutes after takeoff. He'd looked at it, and then there had been a burst in his left wing that rocked the whole jet to its side. He'd tried to manage the aircraft as the alarms and mechanics started blaring, then he'd tried to eject… Logan remembers the crash. The water pouring through the small seams inside the hull, as he was yanking at the straps that usually held him so safely in flight. He remembers ripping off his helmet and barely escaping before the entire cabin had filled with water… And he remembers the panic of being in the open ocean. He remembers what it felt like to have no idea which way was up, of running out of air, and of feeling his own death so imminently.

And then…he remembers Veronica.

His heart squeezes inside his chest. There is no better explanation for the feeling of a vice-like tightness as he thinks of her, and then the feeling like his chest is ripped right open. He gasps for air as he imagines whether she thinks of him as dead. She must by now. How much time has passed? Maybe there is still time to get to her. A part of him knows that there is not. A sob crawls up his throat as he misses her helplessly. He clenches the muscles of his neck so the terrible sound won't escape, but silent tears leak from his eyes. He wonders whether it has been weeks or months since he left her.

An overpowering need to get to her rips through him, followed by a horrendous weakness for his hopeless situation. Logan curls onto his side and faces the wall. His shoulders shake as he allows himself to weep silently…for what has happened to him, for being lost, and for not having her.

_Veronica_.

* * *

**TBC...**

**And if you're just now reading this, I need input. Would you rather read short chapters that come every day or so? Or long chapters that come every week?**


	3. Chapter 3

**THE STILL POINT (ON A SPINNING WORLD)**, chapter three**  
**by: AliLamba  
rated: T, for adult themes  
notes: Thanks again for the notes last chapter. I was almost sort of bummed when I changed the synopsis because I got such a kick out of thinking I could keep you guessing. But nevermind. No, there is no amnesia in this fic. Haha I love melodrama, but it's not fun for me without a little bit of realism. Or…wait, what am I talking about. I'm talking about jack nothing. Ha! Onward!

* * *

The fourth day after her world stopped spinning, Veronica wakes forgetting that Logan is not alive.

Her alarm rings promptly at 8 am. She gets out of Logan's bed just as she had a week before, and immediately opens her computer, looking for an email from him. Veronica sighs. Nothing, which is nothing new. She showers, and dresses for her day, and then goes downstairs to make coffee.

Her dad is asleep on the couch when she walks into the common room. That strikes her as odd. Why would her dad be keeping vigil over her?

Veronica shakes her head and moves into the kitchen, busying herself with coffee filters, tap water, and ground beans from Hawaii. It's the kind Logan likes, even though Logan is far away and probably doesn't get fancy ground coffee delivered to his Naval ship twice a month. Veronica likes it too, and it's there, so.

She pours herself a mug and has a funny feeling she's not supposed to drink a whole lot of it. Veronica pauses. _Oh yeah_, she remembers, laughing at herself. She's pregnant. Logan knocked her up before he left. He is conscientious like that.

She takes her coffee to the breakfast table and sits down, folding her hands around the warmth of the plain blue ceramic mug. Outside the weather is windy and overcast. If the kind of clouds that hang over the beach were anywhere else they would probably signal rain, but in Neptune rain is something that happens for a few days in January and that's about it.

A strange, cold feeling prickles under her skin.

She suddenly pictures Logan's face. His eyes are wide with terror, his cheeks bulged to keep a small pocket of oxygen inside his mouth as he struggles uselessly underwater. The depths of the ocean rise all around him, swallowing him whole, and he drifts away…slowly sinking.

_Oh right_, she gasps, suddenly breathless for air. Logan is dead.

* * *

Sometime around eleven, when she is flipping through channels of daytime TV and Mac is finally emerging from the bedroom Dick abandoned, Veronica wonders whether it's grotesque to keep Logan's baby alive. She wonders if it's anything similar to keeping a brain-dead person on life support after every medical professional has begged their patient's loved ones to realize that they are worshiping a body, not a person.

She wonders what she would have done if Logan had come back like that, instead of not at all. Would she have demanded that science keep him alive, if at least in some sense? Would she have been strong enough to let him go? Is she weak for holding onto this baby?

Veronica stops to think about that, but eventually it is too emotional a subject. She shakes her head to clear the thoughts. No, the decision wouldn't have been hers in the end. Just as she's letting go of dangerous thoughts Veronica vaguely wonders about Trina, and Logan's missing half-brother.

* * *

Veronica wakes up in the middle of the night, and she is startlingly alert. Her head tilts, so she can see what time it is. _3 am_. Why is she awake? She isn't sure at first, and nothing seems obvious. Veronica tries to relax. When her brain has calmed a bit, it occurs to her that Logan has been dead for seven days. _Logan has been dead for seven days._

A lifetime ago, the passing of a week would have been a thankful thing. It would have meant one less week before Logan was due to come home, and one less week she'd have to survive to get to him. Now it is something she experiences in retrograde.

It has been five weeks since she's seen him. She is five weeks removed from the last time she will ever see the man she loves. It feels as if that time in her life is slipping away from her, and she is desperate to return to it. Every day she wishes at some point that she could go back to their last morning together.

Veronica's phone rings. After the initial shock of hearing it, and the secondary panic of wondering who would be calling at this hour, Veronica picks up her phone and looks at the screen.

_Dick_.

She almost smiles. She's been missing this kid.

"Hello?" she says into the phone, tucking it against her ear.

"_Ronnieeeeee…_"

Dick is very clearly drunk out of his mind. He draws out her hated nickname like his brain is barely able to function.

"Yes, Dicky?" she replies, her voice sweet.

There is a small pause.

"_Roooonnnnniiieeee…._" Dick says again.

Veronica smiles and sighs into the phone. In truth, she's really missed having Dick around. If anything, there would be someone else to cry with her, or someone else who could truly understand what she's going through.

"Everything okay Dick?"

There's another small pause. Then Veronica hears a small squeak on the other side of the line, followed by an unmistakable sniffle. Dick has started to cry.

Veronica feels bad for him, and she frowns sadly in understanding. She listens to Dick cry for what seems like a long time.

"I just can't believe he's gone, you know?" he finally says, and his voice is pathetically weak.

"I know," Veronica says. For once she gets to play the strong one. It is starting to dawn on her how lucky she is to have Mac, Wallace and her dad in her life. She can't imagine who Dick has, really, but she doesn't know him very well. "Do you want to come home, Dick?"

She hears a sniffle over the phone, and it's the unmistakable sound of someone rubbing the back of their hand against their nose in an effort to stop crying so damn much.

"Nah, nah," he says. "Only on day six of my _trate_-ment." Veronica presses her lips together but doesn't say anything. "And I got six days and six bottles of Patron left to honor our boy _right_. Ain't no stopping till the break of _dawn_."

Veronica turns her eyes to look up above her head, because she can feel tears begin to sting again. She wishes she could be like Dick and just purge, and purge, and purge all these terrible feelings. "Yeah, well, drink one for me," she says, gasping around the effort not to cry, "because I went and got myself all freaking preggo." She's trying to make a joke to lighten the mood for both their sakes. She wishes she was half as good at it as Dick.

There's a confused pause on the line. "Wait, you're pregnant?" Dick asks, and suddenly he's never sounded more sober. "Is it Logan's?"

Veronica's eyes close as tears leak out the corners of each one. She forces herself to smile so she doesn't berate herself for being so flippant with such big news. "Yeah," she admits, and doesn't feel strong enough to elaborate. "Yeah, and I'm keeping it." She forces herself to laugh. "Papa don't preach," she tries to warn him lightly, Madonna echoing in her head. _I'm in trouble deep_.

Dick doesn't respond right away. He makes small noises like he's trying not to cry for a heartbreaking two seconds. "Fucking hell, Ronnie," Dick whimpers eventually, and she can hear how sad he is by the way his voice whines her name. He's starting to cry again, but before she can really hear it, Dick hangs up the phone.

* * *

**TBC...**


	4. Chapter 4

**THE STILL POINT (ON A SPINNING WORLD)**, chapter four  
by: AliLamba  
rated: T  
notes: Ughgh no I just cannot do short chapters. I can't! So what if it gets me more feedback in the end it's just not my style. I know it sounds like all I want to do is pad my ego, but I write for myself and I post what I write because people give me proverbial gold stars :-( It's totally lame, I know, but it's true! If you have a moment please considering dropping a gold star in the box. At least it tells me I'm going in the right direction and I don't have to massively rewrite everything.

* * *

Her dream makes no sense. _These have been cleared by central command._

"Veronica," a voice calls. It is a familiar voice…but it is not Logan's. Veronica turns her head away from the sound and tries to return to her dream. The sun is bright against her eyelids. "Veronica, wake up," the voice insists, and a hand shakes her shoulder.

Veronica doesn't want to wake up. She doesn't even remember falling asleep after talking to Dick. A jerk of her shoulder kicks the hand off and Veronica tries to move away from the intruder. The voice makes a frustrated sound, and then the hand grabs her shoulder and throws it back against the mattress. "God damnit Veronica wake _up!"_

An angry retort is on her lips as Veronica sits up heatedly and focuses on Mac's face.

But then she hears it.

There is a dull thunder of noise outside her window. Specific voices shout above a crowd's. The unmistakable sound of cameras clicking litter the air as the blaze of flashes spark through the cloudy sky outside.

Panic spikes through Veronica's blood. She knows what's happening.

The world has found out, and the world has come to see.

Veronica allows herself a split second of horror. She looks slowly to Mac, pure disbelief, as if desperate for Mac to contradict what Veronica has already deduced. Mac is dancing in front of her vision so desperate to go and be anywhere else. Veronica rips off the covers.

She dresses hurriedly, stuffing extra clothes into an old gym bag as Mac collects Veronica's laptop, cell phone, and searches for anything else that might be incriminating in someone else's hands. Mac has learned a lot in the short amount of time Veronica has been her mentor. Logan's room is cleared out of anything personal in less than ten minutes.

Together they barge into the living room. Veronica feels mentally half a step behind her friend and lets Mac take the lead, and she is flooded with relief when her dad and Wallace are waiting for them, random bags filled with familiar junk in their hands. The television is on, and amidst her breathless panic, Veronica turns to look.

It's Trina. She's in some sunny climate and is holding a tissue delicately to her nose. She looks too preoccupied with acting sad to be convincingly sad.

"I loved my brother. He was a hero, not just to our country – but to me." Trina dabs at the corners of her eyes. They are perfectly made up; there aren't any tears there to wipe away. "The only bright spot in all of this is that he lives on. His beloved girlfriend, Veronica Mars, is pregnant with their child." Veronica stops breathing. Her eyes go wide. This can't be real life. _No._ "I am leaving for my brother's beloved Neptune, California now so that we can all be reunited as a family, and grieve for Logan together. I ask that the media please respect our privacy at this time of deepest tragedy."

Veronica can't even bring herself to be shocked. Instinctualy, protective fury has started in her heart, and the muscle is _pumping, pumping, pumping_ it through her veins. It is the sort of helpless and unrelenting anger that accompanies knowing just how completely idiotically irrational some people are in this world, how completely oblivious these idiots are to their own fucking idiocy, and how there is _nothing_ you can do to help people who are so fucking STUPID that they are completely beyond reason. Veronica wants to break something. She wants to scream. She wants to hunt down Trina Echolls and completely _ruin her life_. The idea that she would trade her own brother's _death_ and the protection of privacy afforded to his _baby_ for media coverage is just beyond surreal, and beyond enraging. She wonders how many times Trina rehearsed her speech before she let them record her.

Veronica feels three pairs of eyes upon her. She is having such a hard time controlling her anger, and now is absolutely not to the time to process it. They need to leave. They're not safe here anymore. They need to protect Logan. They need to protect the baby.

"Let's go," she says, and her voice hasn't sounded so strong and solid in a week.

* * *

When her dad opens the front door to Logan's house, the torrent of waiting reporters immediately surrounds her. They scream her name, and a sea of white flashes explode in her face. Adrenaline is surging through her bloodstream and she has to fight every separate instinct to punch these poachers in the face. She wants to scream at them. _What is wrong with you?!_ she rages inside instead.

Finally, the passenger's side door of Logan's blue BMW comes into view. Veronica doesn't even pause to see who's in her way. She yanks the door open and throws herself inside, shoving her two stupid duffel bags to the ground by her feet. Mac takes the driver's seat and turns the engine over. She's gritting her teeth but similarly determined not to lose control.

"That came on the news about an hour ago!" she shouts, because she has to shout to be heard. "These fuckers started showing up real soon after that. At first there weren't so. _fucking. many!_" She says, throwing the words at the people outside accusingly, as if the swarming crowd around the car could or would care to hear her. Mac fumes as a photographer jumps in front of the car and she is forced to slam on the breaks.

Keith and Wallace barge through the collected vultures, waving and shoving people away from the car Mac is trying to drive. When she finally has a clear path to the street, Mac suddenly stops. She's trying to wait for them. Keith waves her on with an angry shout, and Mac doesn't linger for him to change his mind. The car jumps into gear as Mac stamps on the gas pedal, and Veronica is thrown into her seat as they make a path to open road.

The worst part about trying to figure out whether you're being followed is _trying to figure out whether you're being followed_. Despite the obvious sickos who try to start a motorcade behind Logan's conspicuously blue BMW, Veronica and Mac spend almost half an hour on the edge of their seats, scanning the roads as Veronica attempts to direct Mac through basic evasive maneuvers. Bad guys aren't always in the habit of driving distinctive cars.

Mac doesn't stop breathing through her teeth until they are on an open highway and passing a car only every ten minutes. After getting them safely out of the city, Veronica doesn't question where her friend is taking them, even after she realizes that Mac isn't driving aimlessly, and that they're not going to circle back toward her dad's house, or to Wallace's, or to Mac's own.

Mac's hands are still white on the steering wheel when Veronica's cell phone rings almost an hour after they left.

It's Keith.

"Hi sweetie," he says, because that's what he always says, even though this time he is clearly feeling the absolute opposite of pleasantly affectionate. "Could you put Mac on?"

"She's driving," Veronica argues.

"So am I sweetheart." Veronica's lips press together disapprovingly. Her dad's voice is dangerously well-controlled though, so she passes Mac the phone.

"Yeah?" Mac says, her voice border-line shouting. Mac is clearly feeling not so well behaved.

Mac yanks the phone away from her ear as if it had tried to bite her. She grits her teeth and puts the phone on speaker.

"—_ever stop to think that maybe I might have some input as to where you are taking my daughter?_"

Veronica winces. Her dad is loud when he's mad.

"Hey, I'm on top of it alright!" she erupts. "And where the hell are you guys right now? It's not like we planned this! I'm doing the best I fucking can!"

A thought suddenly inserts itself into Veronica's mind.

"Mac," she says, her voice quiet. There's an easy-off gas station coming up ahead, and Veronica signals to it wildly. Her dad is shouting again but Veronica isn't listening.

Mac throws her a nasty, exasperated look, like she's just really tired of her _life_ right now. Eventually Mac rolls her eyes and grips the steering wheel extra tight, pulling off the highway like Veronica asks.

"Dad we're gonna have to call you back," Veronica says, and she hangs up the phone before her dad can properly respond.

Mac pulls to a stop at one of the pumps and turns on Veronica immediately. Veronica wishes she could help her friend vent some of her frustrations in a shouting match right now, but there are more pressing things to discuss. She grabs her phone and opens the text program.

_BUGS_, she types, shoving the device in Mac's face.

For a second Mac looks like she's really had it with the Mars family, and then – she gets it. Her eyes widen, and she looks directly into Veronica's eyes. Veronica nods. Suddenly Mac is looking everywhere inside the car, flipping down the visor, opening every compartment. Veronica hops out of the passenger's side door and drops to the ground, looking for tracking devices some opportunistic reporter could have stuck beneath the bumper.

She finds two. Mac finds a listening device under her seat. They hold out their prizes to each other and communicate silently.

_What do you want to do with these?_ Mac asks with her eyes. Veronica weighs the tracking bugs in her hands. She looks around, and spots two cars under lax supervision. She points, and offers Mac one of the bugs.

They split up and Veronica heads to one the cars: a beige minivan at least ten years old. The driver of that car was last seen dragging what Veronica presumed to be the woman's child to the rest stop bathroom by the said child's hair, with what Veronica hoped to be slushie all over the child's lap. One of the devices goes on that car.

The other they stick to a new black luxury coupe. The owner of that car is bragging to someone about their yacht via a bluetooth headset, and shouts to Mac that he doesn't need his windows washed when she gets close.

Mac and Veronica reunite inside Logan's car. Veronica ignores her vibrating phone as she sees her dad is calling again, as Mac holds out the listening device in her palm.

Veronica chews on her lower lip for a moment, and then her eyes light up. Giving Mac a look that says _I got this_, Veronica picks up her phone and answers it.

"Hi dad," she says. She doesn't put the phone on speaker, but she winces, praying that the person listening on the other end of the device can't hear the way her dad is railing.

"Yeah, I'm fine. We're both fine. Look, Mac's cousins have a time share up in Whistler, so we're going to head there. It's going to be a long drive, but I'll text you the address, okay?"

Veronica hangs up before her dad can yell at her some more.

Then she makes a comically exaggerated face at Mac, who is smiling smugly.

"What the—" Veronica says, pretending to have found the device all of a sudden. "Mac! Do you see this!" she picks the tiny bug from Mac's palm, and brings it to her lips.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE WHAT LENGTHS SOME PEOPLE WILL GO TO," she yells into the bug, so loudly that Mac has to cover her ears inside the small confines of the car, "TO LIVE UP TO THEIR SLEAZY, DISGUSTING REPUTATIONS."

Veronica yanks open her car door, throws the bug to the ground, and uses the heel of her boot to step on it.

* * *

Mac and Veronica spend the rest of the car drive fuming. The vent about the injustice of it all, about how revolted they are by Trina's actions, and how they can't believe how nauseating people can be.

"I knew this was going to happen," Mac says eventually. Veronica's brow furrows in response.

"What is that supposed to mean."

Mac sighs. She shakes her head. "Logan's name appeared on an updated list of the dead yesterday. Reuters found it early this morning. At first I don't think they knew what kind of story they had – most of those Reuters guys aren't really reporting from stateside, you know? All they said at first was that some Navy lieutenant named Echolls had died during a training mission." The corners of Mac's lips pinch sadly as she frowns. "But they figured it out, I guess."

She sighs again, and glances in Veronica's direction. "Must've been a slow news day, or something."

Veronica turns away from her friend and focuses her attention on the road ahead. She had almost forgotten about her grief, for awhile. Thinking of Logan's name on a list makes the sadness throb in her belly and threaten to upset her careful mental balance. Thinking that the death of the man she loves could be reduced to such simple terms…is nearly overwhelming.

At some point Mac lets Veronica know where they're headed. A good internet friend of hers owns a cabin by Isabella Lake, and they agree it seems like the safest option to lay low for awhile. They're not sure what to do about the conspicuous car they drive. They know they weren't followed for very long outside of Neptune, but they still keep checking the traffic behind them for anything suspicious. At some point they text Wallace to let him know the plan and to give him an address. They receive an angry slew of messy text messages from Keith in reply, and then one apologetic text from Wallace where he assures them that Keith is no longer driving and has not crashed the car.

The cabin is smaller than Logan's beach house. There are two bedrooms – one with a queen bed, and another with two small twins. They take over the former, anticipating that the two men in their life aren't mature enough to bunk up.

Before Keith and Wallace can find the house, Veronica and Mac spend a good amount of time working around the outside of the cabin, figuring out how to turn on the water main and the back-up generator. They are miles from any neighbor.

Veronica texts her dad when she and Mac run out of chores. He tells her he's still about an hour away.

When she goes to give Mac the status update, she finds the brunette in front of the refrigerator, examining a bottle of vodka she'd found.

Veronica's shoulders visibly sag. "You have no idea how badly I want some of that right now," she admits.

Mac smirks at her, understanding completely. "How bad of a friend would I be if I opened this?"

Veronica rolls her eyes. "I'll survive."

The thankfulness is palpable in her friend's gaze as Mac screws off the cap and takes an inglorious swig straight from the bottle.

"_Ohmygod_," she groans like it's all one word. "This might be better than sex right now."

* * *

Twenty minutes later they're sitting on the back porch eating granola bars. It's the only thing they had managed to find that was still in date and fully packaged.

Mac has her laptop out and is scrolling through the internet via satellite, but Veronica doesn't need any sort of distraction. She stares out into the woods and tries to process the morning's events.

She's reexamining the last week's information through a few different filters. She's also stuck in a situation where she has to imagine living a life in the public eye. A part of her has never really understood what Logan, and some of her other 09er friends have gone through. Sure, she could sort of empathize…but you can't really understand until the target is on your own back. You can't understand until you're suddenly faced with the idea that you will never have a private life again. Someone will always be interested in your secrets and nothing you ever do will be safe from public interest. She thought it was bad enough to be the star of her own sex tape, but she hadn't realized how relatively few people had seen that tape until she imagines it featured as part of a segment on Entertainment Tonight.

It is frustrating to think that all of her own shortcomings will now be susceptible to public consumption, and that every one of her failures will now forever be attached to Logan's name. And his memory.

She sighs, and tries to fight off the helpless anger that is breeding beneath her skin.

"What are they saying about him?"

For a second, she's not convinced that she's asked the question out loud. Mac is heavily distracted by her work and perhaps a bit muddled because she's getting a little bit tipsy, and she doesn't look over immediately.

"What you'd expect, mostly. Hero, Naval accident, tragedy…" Veronica nods, somberly. Mac continues, "You're getting a lot of coverage now. Let me tell you, if I was in charge of your public image we'd be releasing some head shots right about now. Because so far the only pictures anyone has of you are from this morning, and…well…you've looked better."

Veronica looks down at herself. She is wearing a bra, thankfully, even though she only barely remembers putting one on before running out the door. She has one of Logan's t-shirts on under a hooded sweatshirt, but she'd picked her jeans out of the laundry pile and there is a coffee stain on one thigh. She'd pulled her socks on so hurriedly that she'd accidentally tucked part of her pants inside one. There's no make-up on her unwashed face, and her hair is a mess. She frowns at herself, feeling self-pity for exactly one second. _One_. She gets over it.

A few minutes of silence pass.

"Do you think I could read the Reuters article?"

Veronica isn't sure she asks because she actually wants to read it, or because she finally needs something to distract her from dangerous thoughts that make her sad.

Mac gives her a surprised expression before tapping a few keys on her keyboard and handing over the laptop.

Veronica takes a deep breath, and then reads.

_The U.S. Navy said on Monday that the pilot of an F/A-18F fighter jet that crashed during a training mission near Manila on Thursday was killed in the accident._

_The pilot, who Navy spokesmen have since identified as Lieutenant Logan Echolls, 28, died when the aircraft crashed in the South China Sea, some 40 miles east of the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, where he had been stationed with the USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier. There were no reports of any other injuries or property damage associated with the loss, the Navy said in a statement, citing reports from the scene._

_Navy personnel took several hours to search the crash site, but they were unable to recover the jet or the pilot. Tropical storms in the area hindered their efforts._

_The cause of the crash will be investigated, the Navy said when reached for comment._

Veronica frowns in confusion. She reads it again.

"This is wrong," she says immediately after reading it for a second time. Mac jolts up, as if she was basking in the sun and drifting off to sleep. It could be because of the quarter bottle of vodka she's consumed so far.

"This is wrong," Veronica says again, her eyes trained on the screen even as her chin and shoulders are angled toward Mac so her friend can hear her better.

"The guy who came to see me after Logan died – the one who told me – he didn't say any of this." Mac is looking at her strangely. "Look, this says Logan died in the South China Sea, and the guy who came to see me said he died in the Andaman Sea. And they have his date of death all wrong; it's three days off. And they say here that his jet was never recovered!" There's a hysterical element to her voice now. "Mac, Matthew Adams told me that they found his jet! He told me they found his jet, and that Logan was able to get out of it!"

When had she stood up? Veronica doesn't remember or care, but she's on her feet now, holding the laptop with one hand so she can gesture to the screen with the other. She had no idea she was strong enough to these days.

She looks at Mac. Mac looks like she really doesn't understand where Veronica is going with this information.

"Mac, don't you see?" she yells, unable to control her voice. "It's a cover up! They're hiding something! Logan might still be alive!"

A look of recognition widens, and then softens Mac's expression. And then - has Mac ever looked at her so sadly? Immediately she is reminded of what Matthew Adams looked like when he was about to tell her Logan's body would never be recovered. _What?_ she wants to yell. What is she missing? A part of her almost doesn't want to hear it.

"V…" Mac starts, her voice treading carefully. "It could just be that the Navy knows what a time bomb they had on their hands. Logan Echolls is famous, Veronica. It could just be that they're trying to protect him."

Veronica presses her lips together, and shakes her head. What Mac is saying makes sense, but it just…it just doesn't.

"No, something about this is off," she insists.

Mac stares at her for a second. Then she pinches the bridge of her nose. Then she rubs her face with one hand.

"Is it V?" she asks, and she sounds more annoyed than anything now. "Look, I know you've been lost in grief-land for a week, but the rest of us haven't, okay." Veronica is taken aback. Mac really does sound annoyed. "We are all trying really, really hard to be your friend right now. And I wish I wasn't saying this, but you haven't been making it easy."

Veronica's mouth hangs open. She wants to say something, to defend herself, but her mind is having trouble coming up with words.

"Yeah!" Mac says, standing, throwing her hands in the air. "Logan's dead! We get it!" She turns to Veronica, almost kicking the bottle of vodka over in the process. "Or we don't get it. Logan was an asshole to you. You said it so many times. But it's sad that he's dead, and we know how you felt about him."

_Feel about him_, she wants to correct. The words won't leave her mouth.

"And now you're pregnant, and we're taking care of you for that too."

A part of her…a very distant part of Veronica…knows that Mac is tired, and has had a very rough day. A very small part of Veronica knows that Mac would never say these things under other circumstances, and that she probably doesn't even believe these things are true. But Veronica is also tired, and she has also had a very rough day, and in these situations it is so much easier to let your emotions ride than it is so be logical.

Self-righteousness spurts in her chest. "I didn't ask you to take care of me," she says, and her voice is dangerously raw.

"Veronica!" Mac cries. "We have _always_ taken care of you!"

Mac takes a moment to try and get Veronica to understand, or she's anticipating that Veronica will say something to retort. Veronica is devoid of speech. She feels shocked. _Is that true?_ Is that really what her friends think of her? That she is using them like that? Does she really give them nothing in return?

Mac makes a disgusted sound in her throat, drawing Veronica's attention. She leans down to her feet and grabs the bottle of vodka, and then takes off into the woods.

"Call me when Wallace gets back with your dad," is all she says, before Veronica can't reach her at all.

* * *

Logan squints in the sun. He's cutting some sort of fruit in his hands with a dull short knife, half-sitting on the elevated porch of someone's house. _Or_… Logan looks over his shoulder at the crude structure behind him. He guesses you'd have to call it a house. One enclosed room with a tarp for a door doesn't really strike him as home sweet home.

In front of him the man who saved his life is working in a rice field, far away. Logan has been fighting the urge to participate, because he is so intent on getting the hell out of wherever he is. The people in this village he's been living in have been nice, but they haven't been able to communicate very well at all. He knows that the man whose hut he sleeps in at night is called Myo. Myo calls him Hogan. It's close enough.

Logan has been conscious long enough to observe three sunrises and three sunsets. His injuries are…mostly mental, though a weakness pervades his muscles and there are healing burns all over the left side of his neck. He spent one of those conscious days trekking through the jungle on his own, trying to get to a town or the very least a major road. When he got into a bit of trouble with a sudden cliff and an overly large snake he found out Myo had been following him. It was Myo who had brought him back.

Every instinct inside his body is yearning for escape. He _needs_ to get back to Veronica. When he's alone he reminds himself that he promised her.

_Always_.

He can remember his own voice saying it as clearly as he can remember what she looked like when he did. It keeps making him want to cry because his situation feels so helpless, and he feels so crushingly at fate's mercy.

The worst was maybe when he realized he didn't have his dog tags. They'd been lost at some point before consciousness, and even though he searched furiously for hours and talked to nearly everyone in the village pointing at his neck…the identification he wore was lost. He thinks that he convinced them on the first day that he wanted to get to a major town, and he thinks that he figured out on the second day that they were somewhere in Burma, but it's not like his life means a lot to these people. Sure, they want to help, and they give him food, and shelter, and a razor to shave his face, but no one feels overly motivated to uproot what they're already doing to give him what he wants.

He'll never take having money for granted again, he decides. It is cruel irony that he has no concept of what to do without it. If he had been stranded in Florida instead of Myanmar he would have burned through every cent he had to get to her, and he would have been able to. Here, not only is there no way to access his wealth, but there is no way to convince these people he has any to begin with. For all they know he could be from…_fuck_, he has no idea… _Hong Kong_. He's pretty sure there are white people in Hong Kong. Logan makes a mental note to look that up someday and vows that if he's ever marooned again it'll be somewhere they speak English. Or have fucking _cell phones_.

When Myo comes back from the fields twenty minutes later, he looks sweaty, tan, and content with his own day's work. Logan is pretty sure he's never looked like that. The man takes the seat next to Logan on the porch, and Logan hands him his knife and remaining piece of fruit. Myo says something that is probably "thank you" in his language, and puts the fruit on the other side of his hip.

They sit in silence while Myo catches his breath. Then Myo stands slowly, and crouches down on the ground.

He says something else that Logan doesn't understand, and looks over his shoulder to where Logan still sits above him. Logan takes an interest in what Myo's saying. He leans toward gravity until he slips off the porch and he's standing freely over Myo.

Myo continues to describe what he's doing in his own language as he draws a crude version of a truck in the dirt with the knife.

A burst of hope rushes through Logan's chest. It takes the air in his lungs with it.

Myo looks over his shoulder again, and catches Logan's wide eyes, and then his slowly creeping smile. Myo smiles in return. Then he draws a sun, a moon…another sun, another moon…and a final sun. He points to the first sun he's drawn, and then uses the same finger to point to the sun in the sky.

Logan squints and puts his hands on his hips, trying to understand Myo's strange code. What he thinks Myo is saying is that there will be the sun that is now, a moon, and then another sun, another moon, and then during the next sun after that the truck will arrive. _Duh_ – he thinks – that's the day after tomorrow. Vaguely he's impressed by Myo's ability to communicate without Logan's language.

"And this truck," he says, almost frustrated that he's trying to say it, "is going into the city?"

Myo contemplates Logan's voice for a moment. He must decide that Logan is asking where the truck will go, because he draws a road leading from the truck and then draws what could possibly be a building on the other side. It's enough for Logan, and his spirits soar.

He's going home.

* * *

**TBC...leave a note if you can :-)**


	5. Chapter 5

**THE STILL POINT (OF A SPINNING WORLD)**, chapter five  
by AliLamba  
rated: T  
notes: Holy heck thanks for the love last chapter. You know that adage, be careful what you wish for? I forgot about that one. I wanted people to read this story and now I'm dealing with the consequences. It sort of shook my confidence and made me question whether I wanted to finish this fic. But in the end I just decided to see it through because what the heck why not. I'm sorry if you think this fic is OOC :-/ I didn't think it was when I wrote it.

* * *

When Keith and Wallace pull up in Keith's bland sedan half an hour after Mac took off into the woods, Veronica is losing it. She's spiraling down into another fit of despair, and she waves her dad and Wallace away when they try to console her. They've helped too much.

Keith is already frustrated when he shows up, and Veronica just makes him more so. He gets ahold of Mac on her cell phone and then tromps after her, intent on having a very loud discussion about safe choices.

Wallace sticks behind. For awhile he lets Veronica cry on the back deck by herself while he keeps watch from the kitchen window. She knows he's there, but she writhes in her adirondack chair anyway, moaning, lost in her sadness.

She hates herself for thinking even for a second that Logan might still be alive. _He's dead, he's dead_, she makes herself repeat over and over again in her mind, forcing out images of Logan smiling, or laughing, or making her love him. She forces herself to think of him dead instead. She makes herself imagine him dead in every terrible, gruesome way she can, because if she ever thinks of him as alive again it will _kill her_. Logan bludgeoned to death. Logan shot in the head, or the heart. Logan dying slowly, Logan falling off a cliff. Logan drowning. She needs to know without a shadow of a doubt that he is gone or she will never survive the grief festering inside her heart.

Eventually Wallace takes Mac's abandoned seat next to her. She has no idea how long it's been when he suddenly appears, but by then she's only crying silently. They keep a silence until Veronica almost forgets that he's there.

"So I talked to Principal Clemmons," Wallace says, and it's so unexpected that it makes Veronica jump. She looks at him, and Wallace is smiling to himself like he's been caught up in one of his own memories and hasn't been concentrating on Veronica for awhile. "To get leave, you know," he explains, reminding Veronica that all of her friends have lives outside of her. Wallace shakes his head. "That old man told me to take all the time I need."

Veronica feels a sad smile tugging at her mouth. Principal Clemmons; yet another person who has helped her way more than she has ever helped him.

"Guess your name still pulls a lot of weight over at Neptune High."

Veronica knows she should be proud of herself for that fact. Her lips twist into a smile, but she still cries, and cries, and cries, the tears gliding down her cheeks without a sound, one after the other. Wallace sits idly by, trying to comfort her with his presence.

Eventually the tears stop. They have to at some point. The body only has so many tears to cry, and they come from a certain sort of reservoir. Once the reservoir runs dry Veronica is left empty. It's the emptiness that is most dangerous. A coldness takes over her soul.

She and Wallace haven't really talked about Logan yet. He'd been the only one with a set schedule during her fog, and he'd had to go to work every day unlike the rest of them. When they were camping out at Logan's, he'd taken over the bed inside the sun porch. It was the very same one she and Logan had spent their last night in, when they'd stayed up all night watching the ocean and the stars, making love, and making plans. Veronica hates that bed now. The hatred she feels now is cold. Or she is cold all over, she's not sure. Her mind is so tortured.

She clears her throat, and knows that the thoughts in her head are going to come out.

"Do you want to know what the worst part is?" she says. Wallace raises an eyebrow at her. His emotional depth has been obvious since day one, and though he's trying so hard and he loves her, Veronica knows she can't be as naked with him as she can with Mac. Maybe it's a girl thing. Maybe it's just that her friends offer her different things.

"There's a worst part?"

"The worst part is that there's no body," she continues, searching the woods in front of her bitterly. "No one is going to come back on a cargo ship full of coffins and come calling my name. Logan is just – he's just gone, and there's nothing I can ever do to completely make peace with that because there will never be anything to put into the ground, or to look at one last time."

Wallace is silent. Veronica is running on rationalism, and rationalism is cruel.

"So the last memory I have of him is always going to be the last time I saw him alive. Back when he could walk, and talk, and..." Her voice turns raw, but she fights with the tears, "…and his eyes could see me, and he could smile, and, and, breathe." The emotion is flaring up again. Imagining Logan alive is heartbreaking. She sees him as easily as she did the last time.

His clothes were so clean. His hat looked almost too big for his head, but his face was so familiar to her. He was looking at her wishing with every fiber of his body that he didn't have to say good bye, and everything inside of her was tragically wishing the same.

She wishes she'd been able to get out of that bed to follow him. She wishes she'd been able to run after him and get just one more kiss, or have him hold her one more time. Her heart aches. She thought it had hurt to watch him leave, but she was wrong. It aches now. She hates herself for being so weak then, watching him go so helplessly and trying to put trust in all the gods and fates that he would come back to her.

She's crying again. Because what a joke.

"Logan used to say this thing, you know?" she says, even though Wallace doesn't know. She can't stop the words from erupting from her mouth. "He used to say that our story was epic. The first time he said it I thought it was so corny, I thought he was so full of it…" she shakes her head hatefully, but can't find it in herself to even mock laugh at her own frailty. "But he said we were epic. Epic like spanning continents. Lives ruined. Bloodshed." She looks up into the sky because the irony is only now dawning on her.

"I just never thought that it would be _my_ life ruined, and _his_ blood shed."

She stifles a cry of agony and somehow keeps herself upright. "It's so stupid," she says with a voice desperately sad, and desperate for reason. "It's just all, so, stupid. With anyone else spanning continents would mean a trip to Europe." She rubs her hand against her nose because it's started to run. "Not having the man you love dead in the middle of an ocean halfway around the world. And now I'll just." She pinches her lips together and tries to hold her breath. "…I'll just never see him again ever."

The finality is crushing her. She hates so much that she has to convince herself that he's dead and gone. She hates everything. She hates herself most of all. If there was a word she'd never wanted associated with herself, it was weakness. And she is cripplingly weak in the aftermath of Logan's death.

Wallace finally reaches out and puts a hand against her shoulder blade. He rubs her back gently until she lets him hold her, and until his arms gets tired. Until Mac and Keith come storming out of the woods. Mac stomps right past them, her bottle of vodka conspicuously missing, but Keith stops to explain.

"Mac and I have come to an understanding," he says, and though he is smiling crudely with his mouth the sentiment completely contradicts the hardness to his eyes. "She has explained to me the safety measures in place here and I have accepted them. We will be staying for three days before making further decisions. Oh, and Veronica, I don't know what happened before I got here, but Mac told me to tell you she's sorry."

Veronica feels too cold inside to care. She wonders why it sounds like they're on the run.

* * *

Mac locks herself in the room she and Veronica are meant to share. Veronica doesn't much mind. She spends the rest of her day wandering between rooms and staring off into space, eating, drinking, and sustaining her human life. Wallace and her dad find some project to work on because they want something to do, and it involves digging around under the house with a tool kit. She doesn't miss them.

Keith makes dinner that night. It's a simple hamburger affair after a quick trip to the local grocer. Just as they're finishing up in silence, Mac arrives at the table.

For a while, everyone assumes she's come to eat. They barely glance in her direction and focus on clearing their plates. But after she's been standing just behind her chair for long enough, the rest of them are curious enough to look up. Mac looks dazed. Shocked, even. The three other people around the table exchange confused glances. Mac is holding her laptop and looking straight at Veronica.

"Veronica," she finally says, and her voice is quiet. "I think you're right."

* * *

Keith is very rarely confused. Perhaps that's why he finds it so frustrating when he's in a position to be so. Like when Mac says cryptic things like that his daughter is right about something, and then doesn't elaborate right away, even when all the blood drains from his daughter's face and she's looking at Mac as if he and Wallace are invisible… That kind of thing he finds annoying.

"Care to share whatever the hell it is you're talking about?" he says, knowing that his tone belies his irritation.

He's not answered right away. Keith looks to Wallace, and Wallace looks back with a shrug as if to say "_Don't look at me. These bitches be crazy._" Keith sighs.

"Hello? Earth to Mac…"

Mac finally pulls herself together enough to tilt her head in Keith's direction. She still doesn't take her eyes off Veronica.

"It's Logan," she explains, and Keith mentally berates himself for hoping it would be about anything else.

She turns to look at him fully, and takes a dramatic pause.

"I think he's alive."

Veronica sucks in some air, like she hasn't been breathing for awhile.

"No," Mac says, contradicting herself with a shake of her head. "No, well, maybe not alive. I'm not sure. But Veronica was saying earlier how the Reuters report didn't make any sense and how Matthew Adams told her something completely different and then I looked into it, and, and–" She looks back at Veronica. "Something really doesn't make any sense."

Keith feels his blood pressure rising just a little bit. It typically precedes the normal reaction of feeling hopelessly uninformed.

He takes a moment to look at Mac, who is ignoring him, his daughter, who is ignoring him, and Wallace, who is ignoring him. The three of them look totally consumed in their thought processes. Keith leans back in his chair and crosses his arms over his chest.

"Would anyone care to explain?" he asks to the table at large.

Mac seems to come to with his question. She blinks, and then takes the empty seat at the table, putting her laptop down where her dinner would have been. Keith has a good enough angle to see the screen, and it is covered with open windows and blinking computer programs. He doesn't understand any of it.

"It all started with the Reuters article," she says, looking at Keith fully now, and looking at least a little bit like she has some form of focus. "You know all about that part, because we all read it together this morning. We noticed that the date was off, but we just figured they were trying to protect some of the details about Logan's death because he's well, Logan."

She takes a deep breath, but then continues, looking at Veronica. "But then earlier today before you got here Veronica finally reads it herself. And then she starts shouting about how everything is off, and that some guy called Matthew Adams told her that Logan died in the Andaman Sea and not the South China Sea, and that they had recovered his jet even when Reuters said that they didn't. Veronica said that Matthew Adams told her there was evidence of Logan getting out of his jet even though they never found his body."

Mac looks back at Keith. Her eyes are so wide and serious, and she doesn't look like she's able to breathe anymore.

"But there's no such person as Matthew Adams." She tries to let that information sink in. "He doesn't exist."

There's a deathly pause at the table, as everyone tries to process what Mac is saying. Keith recovers first. He looks at his daughter, who looks so wide-eyed and lost it might as well be her normal expression, and at Wallace, who always seems to be a bewildered step behind. He looks at Mac, who looks so earnestly serious that he almost wants to believe her.

"Where'd you hear about all this?" he demands instead.

Mac turns her laptop in Keith's direction. She taps somewhere on the screen, and a picture of a document pops up. It looks like the original letter had been typed. Half of the sentences are blacked out with a dark marker. He quickly scans what's left.

_Pilot down in Andaman Sea, 1943 hours. XXXXX notified. Pilot is Black Lion XXXXX XXXXXXX. Point of impact estimated 12°96'N 97°65'E. Will follow up with XXXXXXXXX XXXXXX to proceed._

Not a whole lot of the document makes sense. Mac's voice sounds scared but proud of herself as she looks over the screen herself.

"I had to break through some major firewalls to get this stuff. Like," she says, finding Keith's eyes with her own widely compelling ones, "_major_."

Keith frowns and reads the document again. He finds Wallace behind his shoulder doing the same.

"This doesn't make sense," he decides eventually. "We don't even know that this is about Logan. It could be anything."

Mac nods like she's already thought that through. "Yeah, that's what I said. But Logan was on the USS George H.W. Bush. That's public knowledge." She looks at Wallace and flattens her lips together, looking like she wants to roll her eyes. "I know, can it get any lamer than that? _USS_ _George H.W. Bush?_ I mean, really?"

Keith opens his mouth, about to educate these people that the first President Bush had been a fighter pilot in World War II and that the man deserved a little bit of respect, but Mac cuts him off.

"But Logan was on there. And USS George H.W. Bush also goes by the name CVN-77, which stands for cruiser, voler, nuclear, as in a _Nimitz-_class supercarrier with the US Navy. It's capable of carrying nuclear bombs." She barely takes a breath to let that information sink in. "There are only ten of them in the world."

Keith looks over his shoulder at Wallace, wondering if any of this makes better sense to him. Keith knows about as much of the military as anyone who lived through the Vietnam War as a youth. But he hasn't been keeping up with the times.

Mac takes a deep breath and dives back in.

"Logan's flagship is affiliated with Carrier Air Wing Eight, which has been in operation since World War II. They were involved in all sorts of missions: Operation Eagle Claw, Operation Desert Storm, Operation Allied Force, Operation Iraqi Freedom—"

Keith cuts her off with a wave of his hand. "Get to the point, Mac."

Mac looks at him and nods quickly. Her eyes are still wide. "Carrier Air Wing Eight is called that because there are eight associated squadrons." She looks at Wallace briefly, and Keith knows Mac wants to list all eight. She looks at Keith with a slight pursing to her lips and continues. "One of them is the Strike Fighter Squadron 213. Otherwise known as," she takes a shuddering breath, "the Black Lions."

Keith looks at Veronica, trying to search for any amount of recognition. He doesn't see it. Veronica seems as clueless as the rest of them. It isn't very convincing.

"That still doesn't mean anythin—" Keith starts to say.

"Logan was in Black Lions," Mac insists, breathlessly. "The lists of who are in each squadron aren't readily available, and Carrier Air Wing Eight is even harder to find. It's not like they have a public inauguration at this level and invite everyone's parents." She opens her mouth as if she's about to explain what she had to do to access the information, before she recognizes who she's talking to and appears to think better of explaining her methods. "Trust me," she says instead. "This is legit. Logan was in Strike Fighter Squadron 213. He was flying an F/A-18F Super Hornet when he went down. And no one knows why."

Keith finds himself starting to believe what she's saying. He shakes his head. "Wait, no one knows why he was flying it? Or no one knows why he went down."

Mac sounds like she wants to laugh she's so scared of the information. "Both," she says instead.

The room goes deathly quiet again. Veronica sniffles.

Keith looks over at his daughter, who starts to cry silently. Again.

He sighs. His daughter's happiness means the world to him, and seeing her so miserable this past week has made him feel completely useless. There's nothing he can do to make her situation any lighter, and a part of him knows that he just has to let her process the grief and be there for her when she gets out.

He has to be there for the baby, after all.

Keith glances at his daughter's belly, hidden by the table. _Ohhh…the baby_. He was going to be a grandfather, and his only daughter was going to be a mom. Sure it should be some happy kumbayah moment where they can all appreciate how the world keeps spinning, but the whole thing is mired in sadness.

She was supposed to be in New York, being some hot-shot lawyer and having a nice normal adult relationship and a nice normal adult life. She was supposed to buy him stupidly expensive Christmas presents when she came home to visit, one day with a boyfriend, the next with a husband, maybe someday with some kids.

But no, he thinks, rubbing his hand on his head as he winces reliving the past few months. She came back for good old Logan Echolls because she just _had_ to clear him of murder. The very same Logan Keith used to love busting so much when the kid was sixteen and getting caught drinking around illegal bonfires on Dog Beach.

And then of course she had to go and get herself knocked up by the Echolls kid, and it almost makes him nostalgic for Piz, or Ted (the one Veronica felt was relevant enough to tell him about her first year at Columbia, and whose background he had so thoroughly checked), or even Duncan Kane. _Ah yes_…his mind sighs. _Sweet old Duncan Kane_. That one had done the kid thing, right? And he'd figured it out more or less. A part of Keith's brain did the math before he was aware of it; Duncan's daughter would be almost ten by now. _Wow_.

Keith shares a look with Mac and Wallace. It's the sort of resigned look of understanding that Veronica just has to cry at that moment and they all have to let her, and no one is allowed to leave. Mac looks at the clock on the wall.

For the record, Keith knows he should like the Logan kid by now, because he saved his life, and because he had joined the Navy and everything…but the man who knocks up his unwed daughter doesn't really start off in the winners pile. Sure, deep down, he trusted his daughter, and his own judge of character told him long ago that Logan was a pretty good guy, but masculine territorialism still made him want to beat the shit out of him sometimes.

Times like now, when just the memory of him could make his strong bad-ass daughter dissolve into tears. Jealously he wonders whether his daughter has ever cried for him like that.

He sighs again, and feels like shit, looking up toward the top of his head to remind himself what an asshole he is. Yes, he knows she's cried for him like that. He knows that his daughter loves him too.

He wonders whether she's just sad because of the hormones, or because the father of her child is gone. Of course he knows better than that. After all these years he knows that his daughter chose Logan a long time ago, and every time she goes back to him he's convinced further that these two stupid kids are meant for each other. It almost wants to make him believe in the concept of true love. What else could it look like?

Keith opens his eyes and resigns himself to indulging Mac's story. It's worth looking into at the very least.

"Okay, so, why would anyone want to cover up Logan's death," he asks, because by definition every crime has a motive.

Mac looks as if she hadn't thought of that part yet. Her lips pucker dumbly. "Uh…I don't know."

His lips stretch into a _No shit_ grimace. "Well maybe we want to look into that before we go making wild assumptions about Logan and whether or not he was murdered."

Mac's eyes go wide, and for a moment everyone's silent. "I never said he was murdered," she argues.

Keith frowns. Mac is right. He wonders why the thinking part of his brain made the speaking part of his brain say what it did. He tests the idea against Mac's information. Maybe it's just that Mac has exposed some miss-information and that miss-information typically mean secrets, and he's been so skeptical of human integrity for so long that he automatically thinks the worst of people. Maybe that's what it is.

"Wait, what was this about a Michael Adams again?"

Mac corrects him automatically. "Matthew Adams."

"Right," he concedes, annoyed. "Matthew."

Mac takes a deep breath. "There's no one on Naval record called Matthew Adams, besides someone who died like…fifty years ago. There aren't any pictures, there aren't any health records – nothing."

She continues like she's reliving how she came across the information. "In fact, I accessed the human resources department for the Department of Veteran's Affairs and there's no one by that name there either, and someone who's sent to deliver information about dead soldiers should definitely have a paper trail. Or at least be on payroll."

"Wait," Keith rationalizes, "but there has to be some record of someone delivering the news to Veronica. That they have to do."

Mac nods. "Yeah, there's not. There's no record of anyone going to see her at all."

Something is prickling at the back of Keith's neck. Something that makes him need to shift his weight in the dining room chair. She's right. Something is off.

"I only found that name – Matthew Adams – once. Seriously, just once. A portrait studio has his name on an email checklist of people they photographed for the US government four years ago."

Keith rubs his jaw. It's not really enough to go on, but…but it's definitely enough to make him a little uneasy.

"Well why would the US government go through the trouble of making it look like someone named Michael Adams" – he's corrected immediately – "Matthew Adams never existed?"

He looks to Mac, because the burden of proof is on her now. Mac shrugs, as if she isn't sure, and it isn't really her job to know that part.

"And why," Veronica starts to say. Three pairs of eyes snap to her instantly. "Why would they not release all of his stuff to me immediately? And if it was a cover up, why would they release any of his stuff at all? Why only give me his wallet and phone?"

She sits up a little straighter. "And why would they give me a phone that was fully charged? A phone that basically looked factory new?" Her eyes go wide, like she's realizing something that she should've known before. She stands abruptly and races to the other room, digging through the bags of personal belongings they'd brought from Logan's house. She rifles through everything until she drags out a clear plastic bag. Keith's daughter brings the bag back to the table and drops it for everyone to see before she drops back into her chair. Keith has just enough time to recognize a black leather wallet and a black cell phone in a plastic US Navy bag before his daughter is pulling out the cell phone and trying to turn it on.

"It's dead," she announces, but everyone can already see that.

Wallace stands abruptly. "I got the same phone," he explains. "I'll go get my charger."

Veronica watches him go until Keith interrupts her gaze. "If they gave me Logan's phone, why would it be fully charged a day and a half after he ever could have charged it himself?"

Keith feels the urge to play devil's advocate. "They could have just needed to look at the phone before they released it," he guesses.

"Why?" she asks, and Keith can see the holes in his logic. _To see if there was anything incriminating on there. To see if there was anything classified_.

Veronica starts scouring the phone as if looking for a reason for it to be suspect.

"This isn't Logan's phone," she decides. Keith is skeptical. "Logan dropped it while we were together before he left. He—" Veronica suddenly stops, and glances at her dad as if the story explaining how Logan dropped his phone is something he wouldn't want to hear. "Well," she continues, "there was just a chip in the plastic on one of the corners. This phone doesn't have a scratch on it."

She shows him, and Keith accepts the black smart phone and examines it thoroughly.

"When I got it the battery was basically fully charged. And it had everything on it that was also on Logan's phone, including a picture of me that he took right before he left."

Keith chooses to ignore any thoughts of his daughter and the Echolls kid doing anything together right before Logan returned to six months of active duty. They were playing Scrabble, he decides.

Veronica looks back at Mac, her gaze deathly serious. "Mac we have to keep looking," she says, and Mac nods quickly before the two girls are scrambling to their feet and heading into the living room. Veronica takes a seat on the couch and pulls out her laptop, plugging it in as Mac explains how to connect to the internet while simultaneously setting up a computer lab on the floor. Keith feels torn as he watches them passively. He's not sure if it's just that he doesn't want to believe Mac's theories, or he's just really afraid that she's right about something. What he's really worried about what it'll do to his daughter, the very same one who's been through _enough_. So what if there was a cover up? How will that change the outcome of Logan's death? How will it change how desperately his daughter is grieving for him?

He listens from the other room as Wallace joins them, they plug in Logan's fake phone, and launch their investigation.

Keith sighs and decides to do the dishes. All concerns aside…there is an invigoration in his daughter's face now that has been missing for a week. And he's missed seeing life in her face so much. He would do anything to keep it there. So he's not sure how to feel yet.

After all the dishes are done, and he's swept and mopped the kitchen floor, and scrubbed the stove, Keith walks slowly into the living room and takes a free chair. He is suddenly never more aware that he is traveling with a bunch of kids. They're all hunched over computers and tablets doing God knows what (not checking their email, that's for sure).

"Wallace, read this," Mac says, shoving a laptop in front of his face. Wallace takes it even though he's already distracted by his own laptop. Like it's a basketball someone threw at him from the sidelines.

"_Shit,_" Mac says, looking at one of her own screens. "I don't have enough memory for that!" Whatever she's concerned with, it goes right over Keith's head. Mac gasps with realization. She runs out of the room and comes back holding an armful of electronic boxes, which she dumps onto the living room floor and starts hooking up immediately.

"Shouldn't we be worried about someone catching onto your little exploration?" Keith has to wonder out loud. Mac barely looks at him.

"Nah," she explains. "Gerry's way paranoid."

As if that makes him feel any more relaxed. _Who is Gerry?_ he wants to know, but after a minute he decides it doesn't matter.

At some point he lets the young people continue without him and Keith goes to bed. He won't be party to this mad goose chase, regardless of the hairs standing on the back of his neck, and there's not a lot for him to do anyway. He's better on his feet, and any legwork to be done is half a world away.

* * *

Logan is having a hard time not sprinting toward the big hummer-type vehicle that is bouncing toward the center of the village. He's been standing there for hours, pacing around what could be called the town square, ignoring the way people have been looking at him, and laughing at him for being so impatient. He doesn't care.

Myo came back an hour ago, after working in the fields for only a half-day. Logan is keeping time now by the passage of the sun, and the established eating schedule. When Myo had tried to invite him over to his small group of friends to share his lunch, Logan refused. He couldn't have eaten anyway, his stomach was in such knots of anxiety. It still is.

The truck is carrying supplies into this village and exchanging it with goods to bring into the city. Logan approaches the truck hurriedly when it pulls to a stop. Baskets of clothing, some sort of grain, and barrels of fresh drinking water are being emptied off the truck, which will all be added to the village's reserves.

When Logan looks around, he finds Myo right behind him. They aren't at all good at communicating, but they have a mutual understanding, he thinks. He's pretty sure. Logan steps aside so that Myo and the driver of the truck can have some sort of conversation. After a few obvious pleasantries, Logan hears his own name, _Hogan_, with some gestures in his direction. The driver of the humvee looks Logan up and down. He makes an expression like he really doesn't want to make Logan his responsibility.

"Look, I can pay you," Logan inserts, and then he is reminded that these people don't understand his language. He feels stupid all over again.

Myo and the other man evaluate him slowly for a moment, and then resume their normal conversation. There is some more give and take, but Logan has to look away. He has to remember that his life isn't so much in his own hands right now, and he has to release some amount of control.

He squints through the sun, looking at the collected villagers all looking at him, or at least concentrated on the big hulking automobile in the middle of their town. He's trying not to cry with frustration.

Eventually, there is a tap on his shoulder. Logan swings around, and finds Myo smiling at him kindly.

He says something to Logan, nodding his head as he says it, bowing a little at the waist as he explains in his own language. Logan searches for any sign of what Myo could be saying. Myo gestures at the truck, almost in the way Vanna White gestures at vowels.

_He's going_. He knows in every cell of his body that he's getting on that truck.

He looks at the humvee and feels so overwhelmed. Then he looks at Myo, and his jaw and all the muscles of his face suddenly go slack. He doesn't know what to say. If Myo was a girl he probably would've kissed him full on the mouth he is so exhaustively jubilant inside.

He is going home.

Logan throws his arms around Myo's shoulders and grasps him in a tight hug instead. He's trying to hold it together he's so happy, and so thankful, and so amazed by human kindness. Myo lets him hold on for awhile, and then he laughs softly and kindly and pats Logan tentatively in return, saying something simple in his language. When Logan pulls back he has to wipe at his eyes.

Myo is smiling proudly, and from his hands he produces a small handmade satchel full of coins. Logan has never been more floored, more in awe, and more filled with gratitude.

"I'll repay you for this," he vows, fighting with his emotions. "I don't know how, but I will." He looks deeply into Myo's eyes, so even if there's any doubt about what he's saying, there won't be any doubt in how he feels in that moment.

"Thank you for saving my life."

* * *

**TBC.**


	6. Chapter 6

**THE STILL POINT (ON A SPINNING WORLD)**, chapter six  
by: AliLamba  
rated: T  
notes: Thanks to jentreth for volunteering to be my beta :-) You rock girl, and thanks for taking the initiative. This chapter, and a special character, are for you.

* * *

It's two in the morning. Since when has it been two in the morning?

Veronica ignores what her laptop is telling her, and clicks on a new link. Her eyes light up.

"Yahtzee."

Veronica's eyes glow as she looks at the screen. She already knew that Logan flew an F/A-18F Super Hornet. She's known for hours that all the Black Lions do. What she found out twenty minutes ago is that the Black Lion's jets were different from the F/A-18_E_ Super Hornets in one key design feature: tandem seating. Meaning Logan…had a copilot. While it still bugs her a little bit that he never mentioned flying with someone (they hardly spoke about his deployment at all), Veronica tries to focus on what's important instead.

The copilot hadn't died. There'd been no mention of another person by either Matthew Adams or the 24-hour media coverage.

Obviously this was of some interest to Veronica Mars, but she's trying really hard not to let herself get carried away, because there are so many logical explanations as to why Logan's Weapons Specialist Officer would still be alive when Logan had died. Maybe the mission hadn't called for one. Maybe the WSO was sick that day. Maybe the WSO knew that the plane was going to malfunction and purposefully stayed on deck. Maybe the WSO was the person who fucked with the plane in the first place.

Finding about this person is a _lead_. It is something she recognizes, and can grab hold of, because over the last week she's never felt less like herself. She hates that she hadn't looked into Logan's death sooner; hadn't even questioned what Matthew Adams had told her. What kind of Veronica Mars wouldn't notice that Logan's phone was not his phone, even when she'd spent hours looking through every photo it contained, and every text? She'd checked his available letters on their old Words with Friends game, for crying out loud. He could've spelled _Venetian_. She would've fought him on it.

The answer is obvious: a grieving Veronica Mars wasn't careful. She'd been so consumed by the one-two punch of Logan's baby and Logan's death that her world had turned completely upside down. She hadn't been Veronica Mars the private detective, she'd been Veronica Mars the girl. Logan made her feel like a girl, no more so than in death.

Her mind is having a really hard time now staying convinced that he is dead, because in light of new discoveries it is just so tempting to believe in the possibility that he could be alive.

Veronica punishes herself again for wishful thinking, and indulging in fantasy. It's the same clenched fist, angry at herself punishment she's been meting out over the last six hours, because there is no _reason_ in hoping that her boyfriend could still be alive. _Logan is dead, _she reminds herself cruelly, calling to mind an image of him bloated and floating in the ocean because it's the most shockingly painful and real. _Logan is dead, Logan is dead, Logan is dead._

She has thrown herself into this search because there's this wonderful idea that someone is accountable for what happened. Someone she could transfer all of her guilt and grieving onto entirely, as she spent the rest of her waking life ensuring that theirs was pure hell. It is so tempting to find someone to blame, especially when the alternative is to believe in simple fate. What a crock. How _insufferable_ a theory… She knew exactly how torturous it feels to have no one to punish for robbing her of the man she loves, because it's what has been torturing her for the last week.

Veronica has to focus, because it has taken an inordinate amount of digging to find the roster for Logan's Strike Fighter Squadron 213. It's two in the morning, and she's only just looking at it now. Logan's name flashes on her screen, the third or fourth name on the alphabetic list.

Veronica has to hold her breath, and fight with herself not to click on the hyperlink that is her dead boyfriend's name, because what she's been looking for is just below: _WSO Kathy Gilmore. _She has to click on his copilot's hyperlink instead.

She'll always say that weakness made her do it.

Logan comes to life on her screen and it hurts immediately to see him. It's his military portrait. To anyone else he might look like a simple confident pilot, but Veronica recognizes the smirk to his lips. He is looking directly into the camera, so when Veronica looks at his picture she can almost pretend that he's looking at her. His eyes are so deep and brown, and she misses them so much. She wishes more than anything in the world that he was just on the other side of her laptop, his lip quirked up at the corner as if to say "_You spent how much time pining for me?_"

_She sees his eyes open wide, the whites of them looking blue through the filter of water that drowns him_.

Veronica squeezes her eyes shut and takes a deep breath. She navigates back to the Black Lions roster and finally clicks on Lieutenant Kathy Gilmore's link.

A picture of a woman in her late 40's or early 50's loads onscreen. Judging by her official Navy portrait she looks tough, by the books, and unimaginative. Veronica scans the quick bio and stated information. She'd joined Navy right out of Oklahoma State University, flying through weapons specialist training even as she married her college sweetheart and pumped out two kids. The kids were now of college age themselves, and Kathy Gilmore had been Logan's WSO for over a year.

"_Wizzo_," Veronica mouths under her breath, because she's drained and it's two in the morning and she learned that it's the unofficial pronunciation for WSO in the Navy. Logan had never told her about Kathy, but even as Veronica looks over the woman's file, she realizes there isn't much to tell. Kathy had a son named Ryan and a daughter named Jennifer. One hundred percent American-made white bread. Reliable. Veronica likes her.

Veronica stares closely at Kathy's face. She glances at the time stamp on the screen, and then does some quick math. It's about four in the afternoon on the USS George HW Bush.

Mac is still absorbed in what she's doing. Wallace is asleep on the couch. He'd fallen asleep awhile ago after a few failed hours trying to recover the official report concerning Logan's death. Mac had done something with their computers to make them look like they were Navy owned, but they are having a problem with clearance.

Veronica chews on her lower lip and pulls out her cell phone, escaping to the kitchen so as not to wake up her friend. She opens the call scrambling app Mac had installed on each of their phones.

The wide open ocean is prone to having unreliable cell service. Veronica had joked once with Logan about what a Verizon map of the Pacific would look like – _a planetarium?_ she'd said then, because it was easier to joke than to wallow in the fact that he'd be hard to reach and far away. A quick attempt to reach Lieutenant Gilmore by personal cell proves unsuccessful.

At some point during Wallace's fruitless search, after dinner but before midnight, he had uncovered a list of phone numbers associated with US Naval flagships, announced the find, and then put the list aside to move on . A few minutes later Mac had discovered that all Naval flagships were triggered to trace the origin of incoming calls after three minutes of conversation. That had prompted the call scrambling apps. Mac had made a disclaimer though: they were provincial at best, and anyone with half an intent could break through it without a whole lot of trouble.

Veronica takes a deep breath and calls the central operator for the USS George HW Bush.

Someone answers sounding a bit too proud of his job. "Hello, CVN 77 on."

"Yeah, hi," Veronica starts, grasping a lock of her hair between her fingers. "My name's Jennifer Gilmore. My mom's stationed on your ship and she's not answering her cell phone. You see, I—"

"What's your mom's name?"

Veronica feels a touch of annoyance at the man's interruption. She'd prepared a solid backstory about how her sorority sister got alcohol poisoning and how much it had freaked her out and she just _needed_ to talk to her mom. She kind of wanted to use it.

"Kathy Gilmore," she says instead. "She's with VFA-213."

"Hold for transfer," the man says, and Veronica hears the line buzz.

Veronica sighs. This is a little too easy.

"Hello?" a woman says. "Jen is that you? Is everything alright?"

Veronica immediately feels just a tiny bit guilty. "Lieutenant Gilmore, my name is Veronica Mars. I'm not your daughter, and frankly I don't know your daughter. I'm calling to ask you about Logan Echolls."

There is a silent pause on the line. Veronica prays that her assessment of Kathy has been accurate, because she needs the woman to focus. She needs Kathy to answer her questions quickly.

"I know who you are," the woman finally says. Her voice is quiet, and controlled.

Veronica feels her hands go numb.

"Logan used to talk about you," Kathy continues. "Especially when he got back. He used to talk about you all the time."

Veronica has to bite her lip as she tries to fight back against an unanticipated sting of tears. Now is not the time. Now is not the time. Now is not the time.

"Can you tell me what happened?" Veronica says, and her voice betrays her.

Kathy barely takes a second to gather her thoughts. "It's like I said in the official report. Everything was fine. We were all going nuts we were so jealous he got to fly it. I was supposed to go with him, but at the last second I was unassigned. He went up. And two minutes later he was gone."

Veronica looks at the time. She has to hurry. She has to concentrate. "You didn't think it was strange that they pulled you at the last minute?"

Kathy sighs. "Not at the time, no. I mean, it wasn't a weapons operation; they didn't need me. I figured I was only going in the first place because Logan pulled for me."

Sadness crawls at her throat when Kathy says it. Logan would do something stupid and nice like that.

"And you didn't see anything odd going on beforehand?"

"No," Kathy says, and there is something sad about her voice. "Malcolm always takes such good care of Logan's aircrafts. You've never seen such a dedicated air-tech. Nothing was wrong."

Veronica tries to focus on conscious thought instead of her clawing emotions. She scribbles down some notes to distract herself from tearing up, and wipes at her nose with the back of her hand.

"Malcolm's been a mess since. He feels so bad. They're probably going to send him home for awhile at next port."

* * *

When Keith next sees his daughter, it's over the breakfast table. That morning he'd found Mac still wired into the internet, smelling terrible, looking dead but awake, a sea of electronic screens surrounding her as she searched the world wide web for answers. Wallace had fallen asleep curled on the couch beside her. Only his daughter had had the good sense to go to bed in her room.

He's trying not to let it bother him that they're wrecking themselves over this search, but it is. An insufferably paternal instinct is telling him that it'll hurt more in the long run to keep the investigation going, despite how interested his three companions are.

Veronica looks like she hasn't slept well in weeks. It tugs at his heart to see her look so beaten up. But she smiles at him anyway when she sees him, sleepily gathering a bowl, spoon and glass of water before taking the seat opposite him.

"She lives!" he jokes with a certain amount of flair. His daughter smiles indulgently at him. "No, seriously honey I'm glad you made it to bed last night."

If she detects a slight amount of annoyance in his voice, she doesn't dwell on it. Instead she smiles again and pours herself some cereal.

Her eyes are miserably bloodshot, and he knows only a solid amount of crying could make them look so red. Keith tries not to sigh.

He slides a bottle of colorful gelled pills at his daughter after she adds milk to her bowl. "Vitamins," he explains, before his daughter has a chance to read the label. "You're supposed to be taking them every day, and yeah, I know these are probably not the right kind, but I don't particularly feel like bringing you in to see the local doctor right now." The way he says it is awful light, even for his standards, and he imagines she can tell that he's trying too hard.

Keith watches as his daughter takes a bite of cereal and takes the vitamin with a glass of water. He is so worried about her.

A part of him can guess the reason why she would eventually want to go off to sleep by herself. She would want to be alone and cry, probably because a part of her is thinking that since there's one questionable aspect about the circumstances of Logan's death, then there's a tiny possibility Logan might be alive. And if Logan might be alive, she's done shit about it so far. She's probably torturing herself because she should have started to investigate his death sooner.

It makes him mad.

"Sweetie, do you really know what you're doing?" Keith realizes that he's still holding a spoon in midair. His daughter has just taken her second bite of breakfast, and when he asks she has to swallow carefully.

"Yeah," she says eventually. "Dad, you won't believe what we figured out last night. Mac—"

"I'm sure she found out a lot," Keith interrupts. His eyes are really probing for his daughter's frame of mind, and he doesn't really care about anything else. "But what about you, honey."

Veronica looks at him oddly, but it's odd in the sense that she doesn't want him to keep going with his train of thought. She puts her empty spoon back in the bowl and starts to scoop up another mound of flakes. "I don't understand, dad," she says, and she's lying. Keith's mouth tightens and he nods indulgently, humorlessly.

"What are you going to do if we go through all of this and at the very end nothing changes. What if we spend the rest of our lives trying to get to the bottom of this and it turns out that Logan is still dead. Huh?" he says, his voice perhaps too harsh this early in the morning. Someone needed to be the voice of reason though. "What then, Veronica?"

She looks like he slapped her. Like she hadn't quite thought of that yet. She takes a slow, shallow breath and doesn't break eye contact.

"I know that Logan's dead. There's nothing I can do about that. But if I spend the rest of my life getting to the bottom of his death then at least I'll know that I did everything I could. And at least I'll know who to make pay for what happened to him."

Keith shakes his head and can't look his daughter in the eye anymore. Of course this is all about revenge, or vengeance for Logan. It's how his daughter operates.

Just for a moment he wishes he had some normal, soft, peace-loving hippie child who would bury her boyfriend's memory and just get on with her life. Not his daughter. His daughter would rip apart the world looking for someone to blame rather than accept the world for what it was: a place where accidents happen and people die.

* * *

Keith left for a walk immediately after their chat. While her dad is out in the woods somewhere and Veronica is furiously trying not to ruminate over what he said, Keith's daughter reconvenes with Mac. She introduces herself by holding a cup of coffee out to her friend.

"What were you doing all night?" Veronica asks, because honestly she has no idea and Mac stopped answering her questions at some point around one am.

Mac yawns, stretches, and accepts Veronica's cup of coffee.

"Really boring weapons contract shit," she complains. "I don't see why they can't spice it up a little. Hey! They new F-35 Lightning comes in three different colors! Try them all!"

Veronica grins.

Mac yawns again. "There was just a lot of back and forth emails about stuff I didn't understand. So I started reading spec manuals at around one and just didn't stop until…" Mac makes a big show of looking at the invisible watch on her wrist. "Right about now."

Veronica doesn't envy her friend at all. She tried reading one of them, about Logan's aircraft specifically, and she had given up within eight minutes. She'd stuck to wikipedia and Navy fan forums after that for all her basic military information.

"The problem is these bitches at Lockheed aren't willing to wait. They have this great plane, granted, but the Naval technology just isn't there yet. And Boeing's making all these promises about their F/A 18s and how they're going to catch up and whatever, but I mean, c'mon. It's a twenty year old plane already. If the Blue Angels fly it then it's probably a good sign that it's time to move on."

Veronica has no idea what Mac is talking about, and she decides that she doesn't need to know.

"I talked to Logan's WSO," she says quietly. Mac looks at her.

"Her name's Kathy Gilmore. She's got a husband and two kids in college over in Oklahoma."

Mac thinks quietly about this for a second. Then she smirks. "What was your backstory?"

Veronica is almost able to stop herself from grinning back. Almost. "Sorority sister getting her stomach pumped," she confesses a bit proudly. "Very traumatic."

"Very traumatic," Mac agrees with a smile. They get quiet after awhile.

"Well, Kathy said there was nothing wrong," Veronica recites with a shuddering breath. "Everything was okay. Logan was picked to fly some special mission, and everything checked out before the flight. It was simply a freak accident."

Mac absorbs the information. Veronica continues, her voice quieter.

"Kathy said she was supposed to be on the flight. Logan requested her, even though she didn't have to be with him.

"They cancelled her at the last second though. She would be dead by now too."

Mac nods somberly. "They held a vigil for him on deck. Everyone – all five, six thousand people on that ship stayed up until three in the morning and then gave him two minutes of silence."

Veronica nods back. Tears are welling in her eyes again as she thinks of Logan as her baby's father. He was such a good man. She hopes this child gets that from him.

"I saw it on the USS George Bush _blog_," Mac explains quietly, almost disbelievingly. Everything feels surreal for a moment, because in what proper world would Logan Echolls, son of a movie star who once tried to kill her, be remembered by a candlelight vigil after a freak Naval accident took his life in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Mac puts the cup of coffee down, untouched.

"I should get some sleep," Mac admits. Veronica watches her get up and head to their room. She hears the squeak of the door and then the squeak of a mattress, and within ten seconds she can hear Mac's soft snores.

Veronica picks up Mac's laptop and brings it tentatively to an armchair off the ground. It's connected to so many wires she's worried that the whole house will blow up if she snags any of them, but eventually it's settled against her thighs and she can comfortably scroll through Mac's progress.

She finds the blog post Mac mentioned and reads it twice. Kathy had spoken in Logan's memory, as had the flight commander and a few other people whose names Veronica didn't recognize. She mentally files them away though, as if she will send them thank you cards later.

A part of her yearns to reach out to these people. She wants them to chronicle all of Logan's last weeks alive. Veronica wants to think he was in a happy place when he died, and that he was surrounded by friends. She wants them to tell her what he ate, what he laughed at, and what he'd said about her. She wants confirmation that he missed her as much as she knew he did.

Some eight hours after the vigil an interior bulletin was circulated to everyone in Logan's fleet. It was labeled as classified, but not restrictively so; only in the sense that it was addressed to all Navy personnel in Logan's Carrier Strike Group 2 and that the word _classified_ was printed across the top. It said simply that they were changing course and heading farther east into US Fleet Seven's area of responsibility. It said that they were going to release Lieutenant Logan Echolls' death as happening closer to the Philippines so as to protect his privacy and detract attention from their current, ongoing investigation.

What sickening confirmation.

Veronica saves a PDF of the bulletin and adds it to her thumb drive. It's the big one her dad gave her, and she's taken to wearing it around her neck on a lanyard. She's not sure yet what sort of data she's amassing, and whether it's for Logan's proverbial scrapbook or to build a case against the people who killed him. She still doesn't feel like she has a clear explanation of what happened.

Veronica stares blankly into space. What was it that Kathy had said on the phone?

_We were all going nuts we were so jealous he got to fly it_.

_It_ could be the mission, whatever it was. The fact that Logan died at night wasn't lost on Veronica, and it has always struck her as odd. Combined with the fact that the Navy didn't stick around, and then tried to cover up where the mission actually happened…something just doesn't sit at all right in her gut. Something is off.

_What sort of mission would be so sought after and so deadly?_

She has no appreciation for military bravado, but something in her head is surprised that even Kathy had been impressed.

They really need to get a hand on Logan's official investigation report. She adds a mission log to her list of wants before Wallace rolls over on the couch and wakes up.

"What time is it?" he asks, blearily, and Veronica smiles affectionately at him.

"9 o'clock," she answers.

Wallace squints in the daylight and rubs his eyes. He gets up wordlessly and heads into the bathroom. She hears the sound of the shower immediately after.

It shouldn't remind her of Logan, but it does. She's reminded of the time during their two weeks when they'd been able to shower together, and how it had always made them more dirty than clean. She wonders weakly whether she'd gotten pregnant in the shower, and then shakes her head because she doesn't like to guess about that.

This thing insider of her, the thing that's growing every day…they have a mutual understanding at this point. She is tolerating its presence, and it is stealing a third of her blood. She will watch her diet, and she will abstain from alcohol, but if it comes out not resembling Logan at all she'll never forgive herself.

Idly she wonders when the symptoms are supposed to start. She wonders about nausea, cravings, and sore backs and wonders why she hasn't experienced any of it. Her fingers itch to ask the internet questions about her pregnancy, but for now she's resisting. There are more pressing things to ask the internet to do, and that is what she must focus on instead.

But all the same…if her dad hadn't taped the picture of her ultrasound to the fridge back at Logan's, and if he hadn't had a little one-man ceremony as he taped it to the fridge here before dinner last night…she'd wonder whether she was really pregnant. She doesn't feel very pregnant at all.

For the first time she wonders whether it's the void in her heart that makes her feel this way. With Logan dead and gone, it just feels as though part of her is dead and gone with him, even though this life pulses within her. It makes her sad.

* * *

Logan looks out the open window of the humvee, his mind somewhere else even as he absorbs the warm sunshine on his face. After driving all night long, including only one break for a few hours' sleep, they are bustling quickly toward a major city. He hopes it doesn't seem so big only because he hasn't seen one in so long, because he needs this to be a major metropolis. He needs it to be a capital, and he needs it to have a US consulate.

A plan is starting to manifest in his mind. He is going to use the money Myo had given him to call Veronica, that is paramount. Already he is fighting the urge to be excited thinking what she will sound like, or what she will say. He can imagine her laughing and crying, just so thankful to hear his voice. He tries to manifest strength so he won't start crying when she does.

The humvee starts to navigate busy inner-city streets, and Logan has to fight the urge to jump out whenever the car stops to let something pass out of its way. He passes internet cafes, and phone centers, and markets advertising pre-paid cell phones with long-distance plans. But he wants to do the polite thing and not upset his karma more than he already has, so he waits until the truck stops properly somewhere inside the city limits so he can thank the people who brought him there competently.

When they start trying to pull him towards a bar, Logan starts to pull back. He has such pressing things to do and he doesn't have it in him to be patient.

But the people are so friendly and Logan feels so right with the world that he relents and follows them in. He decides to have one beer, because it'll taste like victory, and then find the first phone he can to call Veronica.

The shady interior of the bar is full of rib-level tables and tall barstools. There are open gaps in the walls where windows should be, but a TV showing the news sits in a metal cage over the back of the bar, and a bored barkeep stands beneath it chatting with the locals who are already there. Logan and the two men with him buy bottled beers and sit at a table, making it only one of four or so occupied in the room. The men try to communicate with Logan, but their English is basic and mostly just the same dozen fragmented words rearranged to have different meaning, and they stop trying so hard after a few minutes. It's an amicable silence.

Logan relishes in the cool taste of the bland beer on his tongue. He's pretty sure he's never had anything better in his life. His attention lingers on the television for something to look at while he sips slowly, trying to savor the moment.

He's free. In a matter of hours, or days, everything will be back to normal. He'll have Veronica all to himself for an indefinite amount of time as the Navy spends its sweet time figuring out what to do with him. Maybe he can claim some sort of medical leave and take Veronica on vacation.

He laughs at his train of thought. Yeah, he should take her somewhere tropical. Like Burma.

Logan looks down at the table and shakes his head in wonder, feeling so happy he might combust with it. _Veronica Mars_, he thinks to himself, because what that tiny blonde girl did to him is so strange and exhilerating.

And then he hears that name out loud.

His head tilts, and for a moment he wonders whether he imagined it, because surely he must have. But then he hears his own name. _Logan Echolls_.

His head jerks up, and immediately Logan looks at the television not so far away.

He can't believe what he's seeing. Or rather, he's so completely shocked and incredulous at what's before his eyes.

His own face is reflecting back at him. _No way_. Then it's his father's face. _He can't believe it_. There's some stock footage of one of his dad's movies, then more stock footage of US fighter jets taking off. Then they show his Navy portrait. Someone had just made him laugh when it was taken, so there's a stupid smirk to what Logan thinks should be a professional pose. Then there's a few numbers in a row and he can only infer it's his date of death and that this random network halfway across the world is actually doing a feature story about his passing.

Then the world stops spinning.

There's a picture of Veronica. Her hair is down as it so much lately, parted in the middle. He's so floored to suddenly see her face again that he nearly misses the type of coverage she's getting. The camera zooms out of focus on Veronica's face…and focuses on her abdomen instead.

"Hey—" Logan hears himself say. He swings his arm out and away from the table without taking his eyes off the screen, spilling his beer, and grabs the first shoulder he feels. It's not one of the guys he's come in with, which is thankful, because he's not feeling particularly focused.

"Hey!" he shouts, his voice uncontrollably loud, "what'd she say? What'd they say about that girl?" He's finally looking at the man in his grasp, his other arm flung out toward the screen.

The man looks him up and down, impassively, quite possibly already drunk. He doesn't shake off Logan's grip on his shoulder. The man looks up at the screen, and then back to Logan. He says something in his own language, and then he demonstrates. Using his free arm, he draws a curving arc over his own flat stomach, as if it had grown to accommodate another living thing.

The ground disappears beneath Logan's feet. It must've, because why else would he stumble, his knees giving out, as he staggers back into another table, kicking chairs during his slow descent. The man's shirt slips through his fingers.

_This is it_, he thinks, turning so he can lean over the table he's hit. His legs are no more use to him than twigs. _There is nothing worse than this._

His whole relationship with Veronica, and every moment they've shared together is flashing before his eyes in tiny snippets of information. Veronica the first day he met her, wearing that soccer uniform at age twelve. Veronica the day Duncan announced they were dating, looking so shy, her hair so long and shiny and her face so pretty. Veronica on the beach drinking champagne in the pink dress. Veronica drugged at the party. Veronica the vindictive bitch. Veronica saving his life. Veronica his girlfriend. Veronica breaking his heart. Veronica on the roof with Cassidy, Veronica in his arms, Veronica in college, Veronica gone from his life and then back again and then picking her up at the airport and kissing her in a blue shirt and loving her for two weeks and the Veronica she was supposed to be: the woman he loves, far away, who thinks that he is dead.

_She could be dead_, his subconscious whispers to him irrationally. _You could both be dead_.

_The baby could be dead too. _

Logan lifts a hand to his head and sinks against it. His lower lips sags open, his eyes wide like he has no control of his face.

Pregnant. Veronica's pregnant. _It might not be yours_. The reality of that is like a knife to his gut. Because hadn't they been careful, way back when? The simple, stupid answer is no. They'd been too happy to be smart. _But it could belong to Piz_. He has to… Logan takes a deep breath. He has to concede that.

Logan clamps his eyes shut. His whole body tightens. No matter whose baby it is, he has to get back to Veronica, now more than ever. His heart feels like a heavy stone, already so weighty and tired. But it still squeezes tight as he fights all his urges to explode. All the urges to tear this bar apart simply to release his fury and hopeless frustration.

He needs to get back to her.

Logan totally forgets the people he felt so indebted to in the bar. He pads his pocket, the one with the money in it, and stumbles into the street outside.

* * *

**TBC.**


	7. Chapter 7

**THE STILL POINT (ON A SPINNING WORLD)**, chapter seven  
by: AliLamba  
rated: T for language and adult situations  
notes: I must torture you. Onward.

* * *

An hour and a walk through the woods later, Keith is sitting on the couch in the living room waiting to be impressed.

Wallace looks doggedly tired. Veronica looks like she has never wanted to feel so brave, and Mac looks vacant, her eyes open but like there's nothing inside but computer code.

So far he's not very impressed.

"Well?" he asks, as if he hadn't been invited. "I'm waiting."

His daughter takes the lead. In lieu of a photo printer and an endless supply of manila folders, she's resorted to using a laptop, which she picks up and carries over to him. Veronica takes the seat next to him on the couch and offers the laptop to her dad so he can see what she's looking at. Keith keeps his arms crossed over his chest.

It's a pretty dark picture, but it looks like a crash site. A huge Naval ship is floating in dark water, and considering the straight-down angle Keith figures he's looking at a satellite photo.

"This is a satellite photo taken at the precise coordinates Mac recovered in the document from yesterday," Veronica explains, pointing at the _12°96'N 97°65'E_ in the top corner of the image. "You can see they're dragging Logan's plane. See, you can see the serial number if you zoom in." Veronica shows him with a few taps on the keyboard.

Keith feels the urge to be grudgingly impressed. Or at the very least surprised. This was the Echolls kid, after all, and the plane he flew cost $67 million US. Hey, so, he'd done just a little bit of his own research. Not a lot. But a little. He had a few minutes at some point.

"And?"

Veronica takes a deep breath as she taps at the keyboard, and a bulletin labeled _CLASSIFIED_ takes the place of the plane wreckage.

"We haven't figured out what the mission was yet, but we know that there was an official cover-up as to _where_ it happened. They released this memo about twelve hours after he died, to explain why they were moving the fleet from the Andaman Sea to the South China Sea."

Keith glances at his daughter, who isn't looking at him. Her attention is focused on the screen.

"The South China Sea has some really neutral territories, which is the only reason I could think of for choosing that place over any other, if we accept the intentions stated in this document as true."

Keith remains silent. His daughter continues as if she's talking to herself. Maybe she's still residually mad at him, or maybe she cares so little about anything besides Logan these days that she's decided their argument doesn't mean anything after all.

"The Andaman Sea isn't terribly dangerous…but the fleet Logan was a part of, Carrier Fight Group 2, it wasn't supposed to be there at all. Just a few days before they'd been on course to the Philippines anyway, but they took a detour the day before Logan died. My only guess is that they wanted privacy."

Keith purses his lips. _Why would they want privacy?_

Veronica guesses what he's thinking. "Again, we don't know what the mission was yet, but we know it was dangerous. I talked to Logan's wizzo, and she said—"

"Wait," Keith interjects. "His _what_?"

"His WSO," Veronica explains, somewhat exasperated. "It stands for weapons specialist officer, a fancy term for Logan's copilot."

The space between Keith's eyebrows twists as he tries to process the information. He's yet to come to any conclusions, but there is a fuzzy cloud of information taking shape in his mind.

"Well how come _she_ wasn't on the plane," he argues, but his daughter cuts him off before the question fully leaves his mouth.

"She was supposed to, but only because Logan requested her. Whatever the mission was it didn't involve weapons, but Kathy said that everyone was jealous of Logan for being chosen to fly it. At the last minute she got pulled off the flight."

A little tingle of interest prickles the nape of his neck. That was…kind of suspicious, but not more so than flying a secret night mission and then trying to cover up where it took place. Then he rolls his eyes. _Logan being chosen for a fancy Navy mission_, ha. What're the odds. Keith sighs. Then it occurs to him: _Kathy? Who's Kathy?_ She must be Logan's…wizzo.

"Well, was anything else going on in the Andaman Sea at the same time?" he asks, and for the first time, his daughter doesn't make a sound like she's annoyed with him. He looks at her, and she looks…_ Ha!_ Keith fights the urge to gloat. She looks like he's thought of something she hasn't. _Who's your daddy?_ is on the tip of his tongue. It's been his favorite expression for over a month.

"Well don't you think that's maybe worth knowing too?" he asks, to assert his authority and superior intelligence skills. He may not know how to go about getting the information, but he can figure out what they _should_ know.

Veronica shares a flat look with Mac, and Wallace. Neither of them has looked into that either.

Mac sighs sleepily and it turns into a yawn.

"I'm on it," she says, and pulls the closest laptop towards herself.

* * *

When they run out of coffee an hour later, Wallace is dispatched to pick up more from the store. Mac is scouring Naval emails, but the words _Andaman Sea_ come up a lot when you're, well, in it.

Veronica and Keith have tasked themselves with trying to translate chatter from the Myanmar ports closest to the island of Kabosa. It's stiflingly slow, particularly as Mac has to first teach Veronica and then Keith how to operate the high-tech translation program she has installed, and then she has to hack into the Myanmar government's intranet portals without being noticed.

It gives Veronica and her dad a new appreciation for this girl, and both silently plot how to repay her brilliance.

The squeal of tires crunching onto pebbles bursts through the window and interrupts everyone's progress. Either Wallace has been joyriding…or he's coming in hot.

Keith and Veronica are immediately on their feet and looking out the window. They see Wallace jump from his car and look behind himself, then jog to the cabin door once he decides there's nothing following him.

Even Mac has put down her laptop by the time Wallace barges through the front door.

"Talk to me Wallace," Keith says, his voice stern.

"I was at the store, right," he launches, pacing back and forth through the room and forgetting that he left the front door open. Veronica closes it for him and then draws the curtains over the windows for good measure.

"And I'm about to get to the counter and pay, when something makes me hang back. There's this dude talking to the sales lady, but he's not buying anything. So I duck behind a display of beans and I get real close so I can listen, and then I hear your name."

He's looking straight at Veronica. Veronica wishes he was looking anywhere else.

"What, so he was a reporter?" Keith guesses, running through options. "Did he look like a reporter?"

"I don't know," Wallace admits, frowning as he looks at Keith. "He wasn't wearing a uniform, but he didn't look like a reporter, you know? Buttoned up shirt and all that. And," he pauses, holding his hand out in Veronica's general direction as if to hold her attention. "He had a picture of you, V. And he was showing it to the lady like he was asking whether she'd seen you."

"That could mean anything," Veronica tries to say. It sounds like a weak argument to her own ears. Clearly someone has followed them to Isabella Lake.

"Did they follow you back here?" Keith demands to know.

Wallace shakes his head. "Nah. I drove around in circles for twenty minutes and didn't see nobody."

"That's good," Keith applauds in the way that he does. "That's real good Wallace."

Mac speaks up flatly from her plot on the floor. "So does that mean…that we gotta go," she asks, almost sounding dejected.

"No," Veronica insists, her voice sounding a little too loud. "If they were asking about me at the grocery store then it means they don't know where I am now, or they would be here already."

Wallace crosses to the window and peeks out the curtain as if on watch duty. Veronica can tell that he doesn't see anybody.

"Well we should at least get rid of Logan's shiny blue BMW," Mac observes, and it's so smart that everyone pauses to realize it at once.

Wallace and Keith leave to cover it up with a tarp. It's only a little less conspicuous covered, and Veronica observes them chatting outside before she goes to change into regular clothes. Something about being in her pajamas is making her feel vulnerable, and she finds herself packing up anything that she can after putting on jeans and a sweatshirt, as if they might have to leave at any moment.

She takes the ultrasound photo off the fridge and holds it for what feels like a long time. Its corners are worn and frayed by now, and there are creases throughout the image from where Veronica crumbled it with her fist and Keith smoothed it back out. She's glad that he did, and she puts the scan with her own things, in her own duffel bag.

"Wallace has something he'd like to tell us," Keith announces loudly, and it makes Veronica realize that they've come back inside. Keith looks tired, which has always meant that he's disappointed but trying not to be.

Wallace looks grimly at Mac, then at Veronica.

"I called my mom," he admits, and he's silent for a moment waiting for that so sink in, waiting for everyone to explode at him. "She'd been sending me all these emails asking where I was and about whether Veronica was alright, so I called her last night and left her a message." He looks at Mac. "It barely lasted two minutes, but it was before you put the scramble app on our phones. I was just calling my _mom_, you know? I wasn't thinking!"

How they've been traced is automatically clear. Wallace knows it as well as everyone else. He's pleading with them to understand, and to ask for his forgiveness. Veronica has already given it. Wallace looks so tired, and she knows he's been wearing himself to the bone all on her behalf. He should be in Neptune right now, teaching at their old high school, coaching basketball, checking in occasionally when Veronica needed moral support. He shouldn't be hiding in a cabin in the woods with them like a criminal.

She knows what she has to do.

"Get out."

Veronica knows she's said the words. She knows this because they were so hard to say.

"What?" Wallace says, and the hurt in his face is breaking her heart.

"I said get out," she says again, and this time her voice is louder.

"Veronica," her dad says, almost like he's warning her to be reasonable.

"No dad," she says. "Wallace just said that he put me in danger. He put my baby in danger. He says the guy didn't look like a reporter. Well what if he wasn't? What if he was from the military? Who else could've been tracking Wallace's phone all night? Who else would show up here of all places looking for me?"

The truth of her words is spreading around the room, and for the first time everyone gets a sense that they may actually be in some kind of danger. What they're looking into is something the US government would not want them to know. Someone had already made their mistake with Matthew Adams, and who knew what happened to him. They could so easily be made to disappear too.

"Veronica!" Wallace cries, as if he's the only one who's reacting to being told to get out and the only one who doesn't realize the danger they could be in. "I said I was sorry!"

"You didn't actually," Veronica points out coldly. She knows how sorry her friend is, but she needs to protect everyone.

"Wallace, I want you to leave. I want you to take Logan's car and go back to Neptune."

Wallace's eyes go wide.

"No," he says, his voice almost like a beg. "No, I want to stay here, I want to help—"

"I think you've helped enough," she blurts. She watches as Wallace's face falls, before his mouth stretches into a tight line and he resigns himself. It feels like she has to watch the pain she's causing him for hours.

"Fine," he says. He sounds like a child being sent to time out. "Fine, I'll go." He looks around the room at the other faces staring at him, almost as if looking for their support. Mac looks as if she's both shocked and like it isn't her choice to make, but Keith looks almost resigned himself. Veronica has a nagging suspicion he knows exactly what she's up to.

"Wallace I'll help see you out," Keith offers, and together they start to find his stuff and bring it out to the car they'd just tried to hide.

When Wallace pauses at the door frame, he turns to look at Veronica one last time.

"I'll tell everyone you went to my grandparents in Arizona," he offers, and Veronica smiles because she's thankful.

"Thank you Wallace," she says, and she feels herself tear up before she can stop the emotions. "Thank you so much."

She has to fight to turn away so she won't ruin it, but Keith ushers Wallace out the door and to the blue car as if to hide the fact that his daughter is about to fall apart.

Veronica has to leave the room to calm down. She uses breathing techniques to stop the crying, even though she feels like shit and knows crying might relieve some of the tension inside her heart. _One more down_, she says, as if tallying the people the world is robbing her of.

When she makes it back into the living room, everything is back to normal. Mac is on her computer scanning through emails so fast it's almost like she isn't reading them, and her dad is wearing headphones as he squints into midair.

Veronica has to fight very hard not to cry again. She loves these people. She loves Wallace too. They are her family, and they mean everything to her. For the first time she rests her hand on her abdomen, just below her belly button. So what if this baby doesn't have a father, she decides. There is enough love in her life to take care of them both.

* * *

The sun is brighter now. It is almost blindingly bright, and he feels so suddenly hopeless. He has no concept now of what to do, or where to go. Any plan he'd had is completely lost from his mind as he lets his legs drag him forward into the fray of people walking in the street.

He walks, and walks, and feels viciously sorry for himself and viciously tragic.

He hadn't even been able to send her an email after his second week of active duty, as him and the whole ship had gone more or less radio silent for some unknown and ungodly reason. It doesn't make any sense to him now, and he doesn't even care. The last time he had any kind of contact with Veronica it was to make some shitty joke about Naval soap, and it just seems so pointless now. His whole life seems pointless. He wanders through the streets, lost in thought, until he can recognize by a change in the light that time has passed.

Logan stops on a sidewalk somewhere and leans against a building, feeling limp and weak. He squints into the sky against the sun, trying to keep his mind blank. Then he looks at his surroundings. There's a shoddy grocery store behind him, selling unrefrigerated produce and unrecognizable dry goods. He's hungry, but not hungry enough to want to waste his money on food.

Across from him is an internet café. Logan looks at it for a long time, trying to pull himself together enough to act.

So Veronica is pregnant. So what if it isn't his. _So what if it is._ Veronica is his reason for living, and the woman he loves. He has to get back to her if it is the very last thing he does in this world, because his world revolves around her.

Logan drags a hand against the back of his neck, then over the back of his head until it rests just above his forehead. His fingers dig into the short strands of hair.

_Veronica_, his mind relents, and against his better judgment his heart starts pumping him full of blood again. He is so close to her now. What had he said to her? "_Nine years of radio silence and yet, I still kind of knew deep-down I could count on you_." He remembers because he'd practiced saying it in his head the whole car ride to her house. He'd practiced saying it since he knew she was going to come back to Neptune to help takes a deep breath and drops his hand to his side. He can count on her. She will save him.

His eyes take focus on the small storefront in front of him, with the handful of computers sitting on folding tables and the crude counter with a cash register. His jaw tightens. Logan walks across the street and ducks his head to enter, ignoring the clunky, ten-year-old PCs and heading straight for the shop keeper.

Logan pulls his small sack of coins from his pocket and puts them down on the counter between himself and the employee. He knows they won't be able to communicate with their words, so he only hopes they can communicate with signals, and with money. He's never been so glad to have such a small amount.

The shop keeper tilts his chin at the computers, and then points to a hand-written sign Logan only assumes indicates an hourly rate for their use.

Logan smiles complacently, politely, and shakes his head. He holds up his hand to his ear and mimes a crude phone.

The shop keeper evaluates him, and finally shakes his head. He doesn't have a phone he is willing to let Logan use. Logan feels his hope fumble a little bit, and tries not to get discouraged. He mimes a phone again, and then picks the sack of money up lightly and drops it again against the counter.

The Burmese man looks at the satchel critically and again shakes his head.

Logan can't help it. His hand leaves his ear and he _smacks_ the counter with his palm so loudly it makes the shop keeper jump. He hears a small gasp behind him as if the only other occupant – a teenage kid using one of the computers – was also scared by the noise.

His hands ball into fists in front of him. Logan takes a deep breath, and then he tries one last time. He holds his hand up to the side of his head, extends his thumb and pinky finger in some grotesque aloha gesture and mimics a phone to his ear.

The shop keeper looks a little nervous now, but a little more serious. He looks at Logan's money sharply now, and uses one hand to spill its contents. Coins flow onto the counter, and Logan has no concept of how much is there so he doesn't even bother to take his eyes of this other man's face. He watches as the shop keeper counts the money in his head, makes a decision, and then reaches under the counter for a cell phone. He extends it out to Logan as if he really doesn't think he's getting a fair deal in the process.

A pent-up sigh releases deep within Logan's soul, and his shoulders relax as he takes the phone from the other man's hands. The shop keeper starts sweeping up the coins immediately.

The phone he's handed looks straight out of Logan's youth. It's chunky, and made of silver plastic, and the buttons glow green in the dark. It doesn't matter. Logan takes a deep breath, enters in the US country code…and then pauses. His stomach clenches in deep, abiding shock.

He doesn't know Veronica's number. Logan's blood runs cold.

How is it possible he doesn't have Veronica's number committed to memory.

A frustrated scream sticks in his throat and he imagines what it would look like to smash the phone against the counter, bits to bits. He breathes through his nose and tries to let his frustration flow through him. There's nothing he can do about it now. She changed it at some point after she left for Stanford, and so clearly he remembers getting it once from a friend of a friend. It's the same number that has been transferred between so many new devices over the years, the very same contact information he's had to decide whether to keep over and over again…and he has no idea what it is. He's pretty sure there's an _07_ in there. He knows he would recognize it if he saw it, but the number itself is just not in his brain.

The only number he has memorized, is, frustratingly…Dick's.

Logan unclenches his fists and dials Dick's number. _It doesn't matter_, he tells himself_._ He can tell Dick to write down the information precisely, read it back to him, and have Dick call Veronica. He could stay on the phone while Dick went across the _country_ to get to her if need be.

If he ever gets out of this, Logan decides as the phone rings in his ear, he's going to have all of Veronica's pertinent data tattooed onto his chest. It would certainly come in handy. The phone suddenly stops ringing, and Logan's mind goes totally blank.

"Dick!" Logan shouts.

"Mmmmmyellow," Dick says in response.

"Dick, it's Logan." Logan waits for this to sink in. He knows his friend, and knows it takes longer than average.

There's a beat, then a small sound like Dick is about to say something before he thinks better of it. Then there's another pause, and another pause, and Logan can hear the sound of the ocean in the background.

"…Logan?" a small voice eventually asks. Logan feels his face light from within. He isn't sure whether he wants to laugh, cry, or just freak the fuck out.

"Yeah man," he says, simply. A hope is gushing through him so fast and hard he hadn't even realized he'd been holding it back until he hears the sound of recognition in Dick's voice. He can't help planning out the next steps as his excitement completely overwhelms conscious thought: Dick can wire him enough money to get a plane ticket, to buy a passport, anything. Dick can come get him himself.

"Jesus Christ Logan is that you?"

Logan laughs. He's so happy he's borderline euphoric. "Yeah man!" Logan yells, not caring who hears him. He claps his hand on the counter and spins on his feet toward the door, almost like he could freaking twirl like a little girl on her birthday he's so relieved.

There are heavy, gasping sobs coming from the other end of the line. Logan wants to laugh at his friend for being such a baby. Then he imagines just how drunk his friend could be.

"Dude how drunk are you?" he asks, because he's caught up in the moment.

"Pretty fucking drunk," Dick admits. "Wait," Dick says. "I _am_ fucking drunk. Hey, wait, Logan is dead man. Hey who is this!" The demand in his voice has Logan reeling.

"Dick!" he shouts, as if he can't believe the turn their conversation has taken. "Dick, it's me! It's Logan! I'm fucking stuck in Malaysia—no," Logan closes his eyes and curses himself. "No, I'm in fucking Burma man, and I need your fucking help."

Dick laughs cruelly on the other end. "Yeah right, okay? You really think I'm that dumb? You really think so? Well I know some fucking _cops_, man, and I know the world's best fucking private detective and first I am going to block your fucking number, you sick pedophile jackass, and then I am going to turn your phone number over to _Veronica Mars_."

Logan is so shocked to hear her name that at first he doesn't really realize what he's hearing. "Wait, Dick!" he shouts again, but it's too late. It is is too fucking late. Dick has hung up on him, and Logan stares at the phone blankly as if he honestly can't believe what's just happened. A rage spirals through him, and he brings the phone down on the counter again, and again, and again, not stopping until the phone is an exploding mass of plastic silver fragments flying from a bleeding hand.

The man who gave him the phone is shouting from his side of the counter, but Logan couldn't give less of a shit. He tears blindly from the shop and runs into the street, not looking where he's going until he's lost amid a sea of strangers. He runs, and runs, and runs, until he's breathless and exhausted and sure he won't cry, or that at the very least that he won't be physically able to.

* * *

**TBC. They don't write songs about the ones that come easy...**


	8. Chapter 8

**THE STILL POINT (ON THE SPINNING WORLD)**, chapter eight  
by: AliLamba  
rated: T  
notes: VMars fandom I love you. Just thought you should know. You made me finally get around to figuring out tumblr and activate my long-dead twitter account so I could squeal about _toast_. Yeah. Love.

* * *

When Veronica looks up, her dad is holding a plate out to her. She looks at the sandwich that's on it, and sighs.

_Guess even evil bitches need to eat, huh?_

She puts the laptop aside and stands to take the plate from her dad, looking into the corner of the room where Wallace used to sit. Mac has taken over his space, and she is so drawn into what she's doing she hasn't yet noticed her own lunch sitting precariously on one of her knees.

Veronica follows her dad into the kitchen, where Keith had set up his own meal anticipating eating alone. She takes the seat across from him and remembers what it was like the last time they were at this table. Her dad takes his seat and doesn't look at her, making her think he's remembering their fight this morning too.

"Dad, about this morning," she tries to say, but he shakes his head softly and firmly.

"Forget about it," he dismisses, before taking a big bite of his sandwich.

They eat for a moment in silence.

"I had to do it," she says quietly, because she's thinking of sending Wallace away just a few hours ago and wondering if Wallace is still mad at her as he drives Logan's BMW down highway I-5.

Her dad swallows what's in his mouth before looking at her.

"I know sweetheart."

"He's better use to us at home," she tries to explain, "and he can keep an eye on everything there, and he can give people false leads because they'll believe him—"

She's trying to rationalize what she's done, and she stops spouting the benefits of having Wallace far away when her dad is smiling knowingly at her, albeit sadly.

"I just want my daughter safe," he says, and she believes him.

For a long few minutes, she lets herself feel safe. Then reality creeps back in.

"You know what it means if Wallace saw what he thinks he did," she says finally.

Her dad's lips tighten as he nods.

"Nothing good," he says evasively. What he doesn't need to say is that if the person Wallace describes he described accurately, then the military could very well be taking a special interest in Veronica Mars and her sudden departure from Neptune, California. It could very well mean that they were onto something bigger than they'd already uncovered, as if what they'd found already wasn't enough. They had proof that the US Navy had tried to cover up details of Logan's death. She was sure the major news networks could talk about what they'd uncovered so far for weeks.

"Is it possible that someone simply followed you?" she has to ask her dad. "Mac and I found two tracking devices on our bumper after we left…"

"Wallace and I found seven," her dad reveals, his expression incredulous even in memory. "It was ridiculous. They were all piled on top of each other."

Veronica smiles, a puff of laughter leaving on an exhale. They are quiet again for a bit. Veronica's head is still turning.

"If you weren't followed…and we weren't followed…" she leads. Keith sighs, and she knows he's followed her train of thought.

"I don't like this Veronica. I don't like this at all."

"Why would someone be tapping our phones? Even Wallace's? And how?"

Keith sighs with big eyes. "I don't know," he answers truthfully. "But I can't say that this investigation is making me any happier the longer we go on with it."

"Do you think it's worth going to Myanmar?" she asks, suddenly. Keith looks at her for a long moment. Veronica is worried that he's guessing her true intentions. She wants his body now. If there's a chance it's in the Andaman Sea she would drag the whole thing if possible.

"I don't think so honey, no," he says eventually. Veronica doesn't blink, because she doesn't want to show weakness. She knows he's right, but all the same she wishes he wasn't. It's starting to hang heavily on her mind that Logan's body was and will never be recovered. And she wants to be close to him, wherever he is. She wants to be able to say good bye.

"I do think that it's time to move on though," he says. "I don't think it's safe to stay here, I don't care how paranoid _Gerry_ is." Veronica smirks, because her dad has no idea who Gerry is. Veronica doesn't either. All she knows is that on the internet he goes by rootertooter69 because Mac told her so.

"What are you thinking?"

Keith frowns. "I don't know, Vronica." She loves how sometimes he slurs her name like there isn't an _e_ in it. "This feels big. I can't explain it, but I think it would be best if we moved around while we looked into everything. I was thinking that we could try to zig zag to different motels until we've made some more progress. I thought we should leave tonight."

Veronica doesn't question him, because she's felt it too. Over the years she's developed a sixth sense for knowing when things aren't quite what they seem, and when things need to be explored further. This one feels like a big gaping hole in the earth, and she's just found its edge.

"_Nailed it!"_ a voice calls from the other room. Veronica and her dad share a wide-eyed look and both jump up at once, leaving whatever's left of their lunch as they scramble to get to Mac, and more specifically, Mac's computer.

"What is it Mac," Keith says, leading, because the girl doesn't always seem to notice animate things around her.

"I figured out what they were in the Andaman Sea for."

Veronica kneels down onto the ground so she can clearly see what is on Mac's screens, but Keith stays standing as he looks down from above. Veronica sees a few emails up on one of her laptops, and the others are filled with what look like airplane schematics.

"Boeing made a special trip to the Indian Ocean a week ago," Mac explains. "I mean, not like they went in filming a commercial or anything, but I just found these emails from the commander of the George Bush fleet. I figured that his email would be easier to hack than his personal hard drive, even though I was thinking that's where the official report of Logan's death is being kept, as well as the mission log book, because I haven't seen either. But…"

Veronica nods her head as Mac continues to talk, shocked and relieved to finally feel some amount of recognition. Logan had mentioned his commander. As in, _my COM the douchebag_, or _my COM the assless prick_. All of Logan's Navy communication had been signed by Rear Admiral Skip Johnston, Commander of Carrier Strike Group 2, and every email he'd received during their two weeks together had been received with a hearty groan. According to Logan, the guy had a 'special talent for making new recruits quit,' and his methods were often in direct opposition to Logan's team-spirit mentalities.

"_Tell me something," she asks nicely, propping herself up on an elbow so she can look down at his relaxed face._

"_Sharks can have up to thirty-five thousand teeth," he answers smugly._

_Veronica rolls her eyes and considers punching him playfully. Her eyes shine with laughter as she drops her grin. "No, I mean about…the Navy. I want to know about what you do."_

_Logan sighs and looks at her more seriously. "I do feel a small amount of déjà vu all of a sudden. I seem to remember breaking up with this really great girl once because she had trust issues."_

"_It's not like that," she says immediately. "I'm just…" she searches for the right word, "…curious." That isn't the right word, and it kind of proves Logan's point, but it's accurate. "I want to know all about your life now," she says instead._

_Logan searches her eyes for a long time, and then seems to make up his mind when he leans up and kisses her lightly._

"_It's working out really well. I'm good at it, Veronica. I like it. You know in the beginning I didn't think it was going to be so great, but—"_

"_What was wrong with it in the beginning?" she asks, cutting him off. Logan smiles and shakes his head like he can't believe she is still up to her old tricks. He kisses her again, then sticks his hands under his head like a makeshift pillow. It distracts her for a second, because his arms are so big._

_Eventually he just rolls his eyes. "We have this COM. His name's Skip, of all things, and I shouldn't really talk shit because he's still the COM. But he just has a special talent for making new recruits quit. He does this thing every year with the newbies. Makes 'em jump overboard without a life vest while we're going thirty knots, and they get to pray that they'll figure out how to be picked up by some other boat coming up from behind. I just thought that was crazy. I still hate it when he does it. I always have to volunteer to be on rescue duty those shifts because once we lost someone for over a day. You'd think he would have learned that time."_

_Veronica feels her heart tug. She imagines a terrified Logan up on some bannister being told to (for all intents and purposes) walk the plank._

"_You survived though," she says softly, kissing the corners of his mouth._

_She hears him sigh. "I did," he says, and then he rolls her over onto her back, and there is no more talk of the Navy_.

Veronica surfaces from her memory.

"Skip Johnston," she says to the room. Mac and her dad look at her curiously. "Logan talked about him once. Said he was a real asshole."

Keith nods, hiding his surprise. "I like assholes," he says, meaning instead that he likes _leads_. Veronica is tempted to roll her eyes.

"Would Skip have the power to cover something like this up?" Veronica asks.

Mac is pursing her lips impressively while tapping through pictures of Logan's COM. "I would say so. Here he is with the Under-Secretary for the Navy." Both men on the screen are pictured dressed in black tie, smiling and holding their hands together in a posed handshake. There is another of the two of them in uniform together, looking a fair bit younger. Skip Johnston had had hair in his youth, but with age came baldness, and a sharp, pointed expression. A third picture showed Johnston and the Under-Secretary on some sort of committee, sitting behind a table looking serious.

"A better question would be _why_ Skip Johnston would cover this up," Keith says, and it makes both girls look up at him.

Mac frowns and looks back to her email program. She taps a different email farther down the list.

"He might want to cover it up if it was his idea. See, Boeing had a new plane they were looking to test. They told Skip that they were asking a few different COM's in different areas, because they wanted to keep the test quiet."

Veronica feels her skin warm as her blood runs cold.

_This is it._ This is what Lieutenant Kathy Gilmore had been talking about when she'd said how everyone else was jealous of Logan for being able to fly _it_. _It_ hadn't been a mission, it had been a plane. A plane so secret and new that Boeing manufacturers were willing to coordinate a nighttime, off-the-radar mission to test it out.

"Here's an email where Skip Johnston starts bragging about all the stuff he has that no one else has," Mac says, making Veronica realize she's been zoning out. Mac is reading through an email. "All the best pilots, yadda yadda, Black Lions…"

"Logan?" Veronica can't help but ask. "He mentions Logan?"

"No," Mac says, squinting as she skims. "No, he's just talking generally about the Black Lions, and about all the fabulous technology they have on board, and their super-great A+ tech staff… Hey, how come you never write emails like this about me?"

"I'm not often in the market to test hundred million dollar planes on nuclear-powered airships," she answers, and Mac grins affectionately.

"_Details_," she adds, before she goes back to reading. "Well, Skip certainly pushes hard for this thing and it looks like he gets it with some major promises."

"Promises like…an unannounced and undocumented trip into Myanmar waters?" Keith guesses.

"That would be the one," Mac confirms.

"Well it would stand to reason that this guy's ass would be on the line if anything were to go wrong with the mission," Veronica rationalizes out loud, her voice fevered. "Skip was probably the one who ordered the cover up. He had the means, because it was his freaking ship to begin with, and he had the motive, because there would be no bigger rock star if he pulled it off and no one else would be more on the hook for the mission going badly."

She thinks back to the pictures of the Under-Secretary for the Navy.

"Who's the Secretary for the Navy these days?"

Mac does some quick typing on the computer.

"That would be…Hank Goodyear. Haha, look how old this guy is." Veronica turns to look. She thinks that Mac was just being nice. Hank Goodyear looks _ancient_.

"What do you want to bet Admiral Goodyear is planning on retiring soon," Keith drawls from above, and the three of them share a look.

"If Goodyear is leaving, that would mean the Under-Secretary is going to be promoted soon, and his job is soon to be vacant. What do you want to bet everyone's preparing their resumes."

Veronica and Mac look at each other. What Keith is saying makes sense. Pulling off a special mission like this would be a major kudos. But fucking it up…having a Black Lion pilot die and a jet destroyed…that doesn't look good. When you add in all the horrific PR the Navy is getting for its efforts…this sort of thing feels career-ending. Veronica wonders: would she be desperate enough to hold onto her career at if she were Skip? If someone had died on her watch, would she try to cover it up?

"We need to know everything there is to know about Skip Johnston."

Mac tilts her head to look back at her screen, an agreeing _hell yeah_ on her breath.

* * *

The Rear Admiral of Carrier Strike Group 2 is 67-years-old. Stephen "Skip" Johnston comes from a long line of military men, and he's been with the Navy since Keith was in diapers. Johnston has a wife in Virginia who sells macramé online. They've been married for over forty years and don't have any children, maybe because Skip spends most of his life oversees. He was promoted to Lieutenant by 1968, making Captain just four years later. He earned the USS George HW Bush assignment immediately after its maiden voyage, following the successful command of half a dozen other warships over the last twenty years. Two years ago he was promoted to oversee the George HW Bush's entire fleet. But that's not what piques their interest.

Skip's name appears on three depositions Mac, Veronica and Keith manage to uncover somewhat easily. On one, a woman claimed sexual assault. Commanding Officer Johnston had dismissed her claims and written a strongly worded opinion suggesting she was lying. The woman had settled out of court a few months later. In another deposition, a new recruit claimed to have been handcuffed to a boiler for two days. He'd suffered burns to a third of his body, claiming that it was punishment for having had the nerve to ask for sunscreen during an outdoor drill.

Another time someone claimed to have been fed half a gallon of sea water; he'd been in the infirmary for two weeks for hypernatremia, dehydration, and cardiac complications. That Seaman Apprentice had claimed by drinking the salt water he'd won a contest.

Veronica is almost glad Logan hadn't told her more about the goings on at Navy. She wouldn't have let him go back there.

A tightness twists her gut.

If she had known, and she had put up a fuss, Logan might still be alive. _But no_, she thinks, didn't he love it? Didn't he love the sense of purpose, and direction… He'd told her he wanted to go back.

Veronica sighs and has to hold her forehead with a quivering hand. There is nothing she could've done. Logan is dead. Logan is dead. Logan is dead.

But it's COM Johnston's fault. He was reckless with Logan's life.

"So this is the guy, right?" Veronica says after reading the last one. She's looking at her dad and at Mac, who are also seated around the room using their computers. There's a vulnerable anger in her voice she knows these people will be able to read.

"This is the guy who's responsible?"

"Well," Mac tries to temper from her seat across from Veronica on the floor, because blame is never so simple. Veronica ignores her.

"Johnston is the one who approved the mission. He's the one who sanctioned it in the first place. If he hadn't been so power-hungry, Logan would have never been on that plane."

"Yeah, but someone else would honey," her dad points out from his chair. "If it wasn't Logan and the George Bush it would've been some other pilot on some other airship."

That conflicts with her yearning for a villain. "This is about Logan. The plane was safe. Kathy said so."

"Well, obviously it wasn't, sweetheart."

That hits her like a sucker punch to the gut. _Logan is dead_. Tears burn the back of her eyes, but it's a burn she can handle. "Well if it wasn't safe, Johnston would have known. He's the one. He's who we should be going after."

Her dad looks at her somberly, and she can practically see the gears turning in her dad's head as he decides what to say or how to say it. "I say it's Boeing's fault. They were the reckless ones; they're the ones who built a faulty plane because they wanted to prove they could still make a plane everyone wanted to buy."

"We don't have _proof_ of that," Veronica disputes, because it's true. By all their information so far, the plane should have been able to fly. Hadn't Kathy said everything checked out beforehand? "We do have proof that Skip Johnston authorized the mission even though he knew the risks. And who is more at fault, dad? The one who made the gun or the one who pulled the trigger?"

Keith frowns at her. "Veronica, by that analogy we should be prosecuting Logan. He's the one who flew the plane."

Veronica sees red and she stands, almost screaming: "Don't you dare accuse him of that! Don't you dare say that it was his fault!"

Keith stands too. "That's not what I'm saying sweetheart!" he bellows back. "I'm just saying that we should follow the money, and the money goes back to Boeing!"

Both Mars' stand their ground. They're so high on emotions, and logic is a necessary casualty. Veronica wants to say _I wouldn't be able to handle it if it was his fault please don't tell me it was his fault_ and her dad wants to say _Don't burn the house with you in it I want you safe I want the right people to pay_.

Mac clears her throat from the floor.

"If it matters, Johnston will be a lot easier to take down in the short term," she reasons. "Boeing is a whole other mess we haven't even tapped yet."

Both Mars' look at her, one with tears in her eyes.

"We're talking developmental process, lots of creative integrity stuff…it will be a bitch to decide exactly which person made all the decisions or even just approved the decisions that led to the plane failing. Not to mention I bet Boeing has the better lawyers."

The Mars' father and daughter both look each other over, silently, and then take their seats again.

"Just saying," Mac adds, on a murmur.

There's a quiet minute as Keith and Veronica both regain their semblance of sanity.

"Isn't Johnston basically going down on his own ship by now?" Keith asks, because it's true. COM Johnston had the most to gain by Logan's mission but he also had the most to lose, and he lost. Logan's face and the fact he'd died at sea is all over the news, and all roads are leading back to the Rear Admiral whether the major networks know it yet or not. Anyone who knows anything about the circumstances of Logan's deployment would know that only Skip Johnston could have authorized his mission, and Johnston's career should be in the toilet by now.

"Well let's just make sure," Veronica says bitterly, because her dad's statements still sting even though she's already starting to rationalize what he'd said.

Mac uses her access of Johnston's email to search. Veronica takes a deep breath through her nose. She needs to calm down, she needs to calm down, she needs to calm down.

Instinctually, she knows her dad is trying his best. But this isn't a Boeing issue. This is an issue with an evil man with dark intentions who put Logan on that plane.

She remembers trying to bargain with the world after she'd learned of Logan's death. Hadn't she asked for anyone with cruel souls and black hearts to be dead before him? Here was one she would have gladly traded. As far as Veronica's concerned, the Rear Admiral's downfall is at the top of her list. Everything else can wait.

"Oh, hell yes," Mac says from the floor. "He had a disciplinary hearing with the Under-Secretary the day after the crash."

"Wait," Veronica asks, momentarily distracted. "Wait weren't they supposed to be friendly?" She's calling to mind images of the two men shaking hands in tuxedos.

"Not anymore," Mac grins. "What do you think they said?" she wonders wistfully. "I bet he's canned. I bet he's getting fired."

Veronica frowns. "If he was fired we would have heard something by now."

Mac loses her grin.

Veronica's eyes lose focus…because for a very small split second, before she had noticed the hole in Mac's logic, she had been worried that justice had already been served. She lets the information turn in her gut.

What would they have done if justice had already been served? What if there was no way they could hurt him anymore, as much as he had hurt her?

She remembers Keith had asked her about endgame just that morning. She hadn't had one then, besides the simple: _someone always has to pay_. What usually went unwritten was: _and I get to make them_. Was it just because this was all about Logan? Was it just because he was gone that she was so desperate to punish someone? Yes, the man was going to lose his job and now Veronica still had the opportunity to make that happen. He would have to go back to Virginia and be a husband to his wife.

"We're missing something," Keith says.

For a moment no one responds. Veronica is lost in her own dangerous thoughts.

"I said we're missing something," Keith says again. Veronica doesn't want to be testy with him again, so she lets Mac field her dad's non sequitur.

"What are we missing?" Mac asks, sounding tired. "Johnston authorized a dangerous mission and now we're going to make sure he gets fired because Logan died."

Keith is shaking his head. He puts his laptop aside and crosses his arms over his chest. "Follow the money," he quotes. Veronica desperately wants to sting him with some antagonistic _they're not calling this Logangate_ remark, but she holds her tongue.

"_Why_," he starts, "would Boeing be testing out a fancy new dangerous plane in the middle of the ocean, and not want people to know about it beforehand. _Why_ fly the plane at night. _Why_ not invite reporters, the other admirals, whoever buys these seventy million dollar jets in the first place and show off what they've made."

Veronica barely hears him. The words filter through her brain twice before she understands what he's talking about. _Why?_ she imitates in her head. Because…well, because…testing! Or some shit. What does it matter?

"I know."

Mac is looking at her keyboard. She's fidgeting with the space bar on her laptop, running her thumb back and forth along its surface. Her mouth is twisted into a thinking pose. Eventually, she sighs. She looks up at Veronica, then at Keith.

"Boeing has a problem. None of the current Naval airships can handle a plane better than the F/A 18s."

Veronica doesn't get it. "Why would that be a problem if Boeing makes the F/A 18."

"Because the Navy knows there are better jets out there than the F/A 18. They have a contract with Boeing worth billions of dollars, but the Air Force has already switched sides. Their jet of choice is Lockheed Martin's F-35 Lightning II, which is lighter and slightly faster than the F/A 18 and also comes with a whole bunch of upgraded technology."

Veronica blinks. She remembers Mac talking about this just a few hours ago; she'd made a joke about how someone should offer the F-35 in different colors.

Mac takes a deep breath.

"Jets need room to take off," she explains, like she's tired of the knowledge already. "To make a Naval airstrip big enough would be too costly and really difficult to keep afloat, so instead someone developed a sort of sling shot system to accommodate jets taking off and landing on a shorter surface."

Mac pulls up a video onscreen, tilts the screen away from herself, and presses play. Veronica and Keith watch a jet take off, and a jet land. Mac's right, there's something helping it.

"The newest Lockheeds and Boeings are way too heavy for the current Nimitz-class warships. Lockheed is closer to giving the Navy what it wants though, and the Navy knows it. They're already building the next class of supercruisers with the Lockheed jets in mind, using a magnet system instead of sling shots. It's way complicated, but of course Boeing wouldn't want to go down without a fight. Their contract's at stake."

"Hence…Logan's mission," Keith concludes. Mac's lips flatten and she nods placidly.

"In their emails to Johnston, Boeing says that they developed a jet they thought would be light enough for Navy's standards but with all the upgrades Lockheed was promising. It was a new version of the F/A 18 jet, which must be why it looks so similar in satellite footage."

There's a terrible silence, as everyone processes the information.

"So…let me get this straight," Veronica says finally. Her voice is tremulous at best. "Logan's mission…the one that killed him…it was all about money?"

No one says anything at first, maybe because they're each hoping that someone will contradict Veronica's deduction. Mac is the first one to speak. "More or less," she answers, her voice soft and resigned. "A shit load of money though. Billions of dollars."

Veronica notices that she's not breathing. A coldness is filling her body, almost as if she's actually in a room without air. She feels dizzy, and lightheaded, and she wants to lie down. _Shock_. This is shock, and she recognizes it because it's the second time in her life and the second time in nine days that she's felt it. Mac is already looking at her, horrified, but Veronica ignores her friend as she tries to stand from the floor. Her legs tremble, but she pushes her dad's hands away as she finds the couch and collapses onto it, hanging her head between her knees as she feels so uncontrollably sad and so uncontrollably full of rage.

Her sanity is begging her to find reason. Billions of dollars means thousands if not tens of thousands of jobs. It means families can afford college for their kids or food for their dogs or some awful shit. _But what about my family?_ something whispers in her soul. What is it worth if Logan is dead. Billions of dollars is nothing to her.

This is the shock again: the absolute disbelief that something of this magnitude could affect her so deeply.

No one touches her as she turns and lies flat on the couch. When her head hits the couch cushion the tears leak out, bountiful and silent. She wants to moan, but she stops herself. She's moaned enough already, and so the sound that comes out instead is a murmured scream.

Veronica notices from the corner of her eye as her dad approaches the couch and sits at her feet. He picks up her legs and holds her feet on his lap, rubbing her ankles in silent support as she cries and Keith stays lost in thought. She turns onto her side so her tears will stop falling into her ears.

Mac is lying down on the carpet, her legs and torso unfurled from where she sat. Mac sighs, and covers her eyes with her forearms.

This is it, Veronica realizes. Case closed, investigation over…whatever. Logan died because someone wanted a promotion and some other people wanted to make money. Isn't that always how it always goes.

Veronica finds it all so desperately sad. She wishes Wallace was still there and that she hadn't sent him away. She wishes Dick was there too, because he would be crying and it might make her cry less knowing her grief was shared.

She misses Logan. She hates that no matter how much of her life she's spent dedicated to fighting corruption Logan still died because of someone's bottom line.

* * *

As they pack up Keith's sedan a few hours later, Veronica can't help being consumed by the idea of COM Skip Johnston. She feels like she already knows him, and she knows she already hates him.

She has to wonder if her life would have been anything like Mrs. Johnston's. Two months married, ten spent practically like a widow. The bills paid by some unseen man far away who ensured her life would be lonely because of some bullshit sense of loyalty. Veronica knows she wouldn't have been able to sustain that. Six months was long enough even only in theory. Logan would have been gone for so long, and now it would be forever.

The concept never ceases to bring a tight heaviness to her chest.

_Logan_, she aches, wishing again that he was close by.

Veronica closes her eyes tight and resolves not to cry any more that day. Johnston would get what he deserved. They would find out who to blame within Boeing later. She slams the trunk of Keith's sedan with vigor.

* * *

Logan looks around, and tries to figure out where he is. He has no money for food, or for a taxi, and he doesn't speak the local language. Desperately he wishes that someone would bump into him by accident, yell at him for being in the way, and give Logan a reason to start a fight. His wild emotions run ragged inside his body. The adrenaline is keeping him from feeling so desperately disappointed. He needs to find help.

It takes him over two hours, but he walks around until he finds a huge cluster of tourist shops, intent on using a travel guide to ask the shop keeper how to get to the US consulate. Inside one of the shops he learns from a map that he's in Republic of the Union of Myanmar, which makes him feel like an idiot because he's been calling it Burma for so long inside his head. Specifically, he's in the capital city of Yangon. Logan stares at a map of Myanmar for a long time, wondering where he'd come from.

He remembers that their mission had been in the Andaman Sea, but that was about it as far as exact location. His fingers trace the small archipelagos along the southern tip of the country. His best guess would be that Myo lived somewhere around there, somewhere inland in the south, because it had taken so long to drive to Yangon and they hadn't crossed any major bodies of water.

Logan flips to the index of one of the tour guides and looks up _consulate_. There's a complete list from countries he couldn't give less of a shit about in the moment, but his eyes fall on the one belonging to the United States, and he feels some amount of hope again.

He carries the book to the cash register.

"Excuse me," he says, because it's the polite thing to do. The tired woman in her mid-40's behind the register takes her eyes off the TV behind the desk. She's watching what looks like a soap opera, and when Logan meets her blank eyes, he gets the impression that she really truly hates her job.

Logan tries to smile politely. He shows her the page of his book, which includes a small map with the US consulate pointed out on it. He has no idea where they are now, and he knows he can't take the book with him because he has no money to pay for it.

The woman makes a frustrated clicking noise in the back of her throat and takes the book from Logan's hands. Perhaps she's annoyed because he's not trying to hand her a big wad of cash and get the hell out of her store. Perhaps something good is happing on TV.

She looks at it harshly, and then says something loud in her own language. When it's clear Logan doesn't understand, she rolls her eyes and makes a frustrated sound.

She pulls a map off the counter display and unfolds it quickly. Pointing to one place on the map, she says something that sounds a lot like "_Ear_." Then she points to a completely different part on the map and says "_Yoo ess_."

Logan focuses and tries to memorize the route he has to take. In the most basic sense, he has to head northeast, and he has to head northeast for a long time.

Logan flattens his lips together in resignation and nods to the shopkeeper in thanks. She waits for an extra second to see whether he's going to buy the map, then starts to fold it up with frustration and more clicking noises when he makes no move to do so.

As Logan leaves the store, he passes by a stack of newspapers written in the native language. Something about it makes him stop. Curiosity takes his gaze to the upper right corner of the front page, where the little date is printed.

_Fucking hell_, he thinks breathlessly. It's been nine days since Logan Echolls "died" during his thoughtlessly routine mission. He doesn't understand why people would still be featuring his death as a news story over a week after it happened, but it doesn't matter to him.

He imagines the hell that Veronica could've been going through, then realizes he has no basis to assume she is sad to lose him. Why would she be sad? Two weeks of nonstop fucking doesn't mean she's indebted to him or his memory, even if he is still alive.

Logan suddenly realizes just how tired he is. He's been so battered already, and his spirit is taking great hulking blows with every turn. Now he's resorting to beating himself up as well. Logan looks down at himself and anchors his hands on his hips as he tries not to lose it. He's still wearing the same clothes Myo had dressed him in days ago. There's some stupid faded cartoon on his too-large shirt. His shorts are stained and have holes all over them and it wouldn't bother him except that he feels so alone and so far from home.

He knows, logically, that Veronica is missing him. Their story is epic, after all, he remembers with a small smirk. Veronica has told him she loves him, and she has shown that she loves him. But she is so far away, and he is starting to feel so hopeless at the thought of ever seeing her again.

And the baby… _Jesus Christ_ he has no idea what to think of the baby. Logan's grip on his waist tightens with the rest of his body. His stomach is in knots, his heart feels so twisted and bruised and he just feels…weak. He feels so weak without her.

Logan looks up and takes stock of the dimming light. The sun is finally on its way toward the horizon, and he estimates he'll get another hour of daylight if he's lucky.

Logan drops his hands to his sides, squeezes fingers into fists and shakes his head to focus. He has to move. He has to move. He has to move.

* * *

**TBC...**


	9. Chapter 9

**THE STILL POINT (ON A SPINNING WORLD)**, chapter nine  
by: AliLamba  
rated: T  
notes: Almost there. It's finally occurring to me that this fic is one giant first draft. Something to think about, ha. Ha…ha… I need an editor. Especially because I have a terrible feeling I am shit at writing comedy. But it stays! It all stays…because the mental image made me laugh and if someone wants to make me FanArt I am not going to say no. Ever.

* * *

They drive for hours, and at one point, staring at the sunset, Veronica falls asleep. For the first time since his death she dreams of Logan.

They are lying in bed together. Logan is smiling at her, unspeaking, his lips curved into his trademark, closed lip grin.

She is looking at him looking at her, and then she realizes he is getting smaller, and then she realizes that he is getting farther away. Dream Veronica tries to get up to follow him but the bed dips and sways beneath her weight – the mattress is filled with water.

She hears her dad's voice in her head. "_You've always wanted a water bed_," he says, bodiless.

Veronica's heart starts hammering in her chest as she struggles against the awkward propulsion of the mattress, arms outstretched towards Logan.

She wakes up, and realizes the car has stopped. The air outside is warm and quiet. Veronica looks around for Mac and her dad, the sound of her clothes moving over her body loud in the silence. Her dad is gone. Mac is sleeping soundly in the backseat. Veronica looks outside the car, and realizes they're parked in front of a hotel called The Desert Palm.

Veronica licks her dry lips and opens the car door to follow Keith's likely route. When she finds him he's filling out an information card in the hotel lobby.

Her dad glances up when she enters, but he doesn't stop writing, and when she reaches his elbow she sees that he's calling them the Mahoney family. Veronica frowns more for the dream than the fake name. She feels slightly nauseous from her nap in the car, or maybe because of her dream. Her mind is still holding on to its fragments: picturing Logan fading away, feeling the panic of not being able to reach him in time. It doesn't take much analysis to understand what thoughts preoccupied her subconscious.

A sigh leaves Veronica's body as she tries to let go, and she leans her head on her dad's shoulder for his silent support. She watches mutely as her dad passes the card to the hotel clerk and then fishes his wallet from the inside of his jacket.

He usually keeps it in his back pocket, she observes, so he must've been driving for awhile if it had been uncomfortable enough for him to move it. Veronica watches absently as he flips open the old leather wad and slips out four, crisp hundred dollar bills.

Her eyes go wide, and she hides it by picking her head up and looking around the lobby. By the looks of the inside of her dad's wallet, Keith had relieved his bank account of a few thousand dollars.

She sees a promotional post card propped against the counter and picks it up. The Desert Palm is in Death Valley, confirming that her dad had been driving for a long time after all. She checks the clock against the back wall behind the desk and sees that it's barely 7:30 pm.

Veronica sighs and heads back to the car to wake up Mac.

* * *

"I need a drink," Mac moans, as she and Veronica offload their luggage in one of the two adjoining rooms Keith had booked. Veronica feels similarly weary. She eyes the two queen beds and chooses the one closest to the bathroom for her own, but doesn't feel motivated to try and nap again when all she really wants is a very strong vodka tonic. When Mac heads next door to help Keith raid his minibar, Veronica disappears to take a shower.

She watches the water disappear down the drain. They hadn't talked about Skip after everything they'd uncovered about Boeing. There is an unspoken truce to take the rest of the night off, let the information sit before they work anymore on this project. Tomorrow she knows they will start to make plans for how to best bring Johnston down, but everyone needs a mental rest. Everyone – including Veronica – needs time and space to process it all.

Veronica's eyes drift to her stomach, and absently she wonders when it will start to grow. Instinctually she knows there's a baby in there, but so far it doesn't look like much.

She wonders how she would have told Logan, if she had been given the chance. It would have been so hard not to be able to tell him in person. She can't imagine breaking this sort of news over some unreliable video chat, over the phone or through email. She wonders how he would have responded. Would he have been happy? Would he have been sad? Instinctually she feels that Logan would enjoy the idea of family. He would have loved this baby. She can picture him with initial shock, maybe confused for awhile, then absurdly excited as reality set in. She wonders if he would've been allowed to come home early. She knows he would have fought for the right to do so. He would have been a most active participant in her pregnancy, and the most attentive father, had he been given the chance.

Veronica sighs as she tilts her head into the water and lets it run over her face. She's not the only woman ever pregnant while the baby's father was overseas, and she's not the only woman ever left with a child as reminder of a lover's death. She is sure there's an online support group somewhere that would welcome her. It doesn't matter to her now.

She comes out of the bathroom toweling her hair dry, dressed in her usual sweats and baggy t-shirt for pajamas.

The first thing she notices is that Mac's not in their room. The second thing she notices is that the adjoining door to Keith's room is open. Mild curiosity draws her to the doorframe.

Mac and Keith are sitting on top of parallel queen beds, the shared bedside table covered in paper cups, an open ice bucket, and a half dozen tiny bottles of alcohol. The fourth thing Veronica notices is that their attention is focused solely on the TV right next to her, out of her line of site. Before she can ask what's on she recognizes the expressions on their faces are somewhere between disgusted and horrified. And then she hears Trina's voice.

_Oh no. _Veronica gasps, her eyes going wide. _Not again._

She steps toward the middle of the room so she can see what Mac and Keith see.

Trina is on TV again, and again she is pretending to cry. Veronica sucks in a breath, trying to find solid ground as her eyes drink in everything. _Not again_.

"Trina's filming the Navy giving her notice of Logan's death," Keith explains before she can ask, his voice dazed and far away. "She's turned it into a series. I think they're calling it…" He's distracted by what's going on onscreen. They all are. "…_An Echolls Family Funeral_."

_An Echolls Family…excuse me?_ Veronica's gut twists coldly as fury fans through her veins, her fists clenching at her sides helplessly. _No_, she breathes, recycling heavy breaths through her nose. _There is no point, there is no point, there is no point_. She forces the muscles of her shoulders to relax. She forces the muscles of her hands to relax. She forces the muscles in her back to relax. At least no one is knocking on their door right now, Veronica reasons. At least she isn't tangled up in this mess as well. _Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…_

"Anything interesting?" she asks divertingly, her lips pressed together as she takes a seat on the floor between the beds, resting her back on the night stand turned minibar.

"They're giving Trina the whole song and dance about the South China Sea," Mac answers. "No body no crime, the whole shebang. They chose some burly dudes to do it too." There's a smile in Mac's voice as she describes the officers as _burly_, so Veronica examines them more closely. They honestly do look more photogenic than Matthew Adams was to her.

"Any chance they're actors?"

Mac snorts. "Dunno. Don't think so though. They came with Logan's bag."

A coldness cinches her stomach.

"They _what?_"

"Well, they have to deliver that shit to next of kin, don't they?" Mac observes, though clearly she's not too thrilled at the idea of Trina getting Logan's stuff either. "Hey, why'd they give stuff to you anyway?" she asks, as if she'd never thought about it before.

"Couldn't find Trina," Veronica explains, almost in a trance as she watches Logan's sister so critically on screen. "I don't think Matthew really liked his job enough to care who got the news in the end."

There's a silence as the three of them watch Trina fake cry onscreen. After a moment, she appears to pluck up some courage, holding a tissue in front of her chest in a way that draws attention to her low-cut shirt. She turns her head to the side, perfectly glossed red hair swishing with the effort.

"_Dicky_," Trina calls out onscreen, and suddenly the air in Keith's room is very still. "_Dicky come tell the officers how thankful you are that they protect our nation's borders_." No one moves. Mac is the first one to recover, and when she speaks, it's with the sort of bodiless voice of someone completely in shock.

"No…fucking…way," she says, for all of them.

Veronica's head spins as she watches Trina pause, waiting for what feels like a much longer moment. Dicky could be anyone, she tries to rationalize, futilely. She knows there's only one _Dicky_ Trina could be calling out to. Trina stands onscreen as if she's going to go find him in another room.

Veronica frowns, fighting with feelings of disappointment as she realizes how Trina found out about Logan and the baby in the first place. Veronica had been right to worry about Dick's lack of a support network, because it was starting to look like he'd reached out to the absolute worst person possible.

The cameras follow Trina down a narrow hallway and into another room. There's a sudden jerking stop to the camera as the microphone guy captures the sound of Trina's sudden, horrified gasp.

"_Dick!"_ Trina shrieks, and before she can stop the cameramen (she tries), Richard Casablancas Jr. shows up on screen.

He's had some work done. Sitting in the dark guest room wearing nothing but his briefs, Dick is trying to feed a bottle of tequila to a life-sized picture of Logan's smiling face. As it happens, the life-sized picture of Logan's face is one that he'd had tattooed across his chest.

Veronica's jaw drops. The whole thing is still wrapped in plastic it's so recently done, but even without the wrapping the tequila still would have dribbled down the center of Dick's chest, and into the rolls of stomach fat made by the way he's sitting hunched over on the bed to get a good look at what he's doing.

"_Looogaaaan!_" Dick wails in the way only one drunk bro can to another; shrill and drawn out and desperate. He wipes at fake Logan's face to clean up the alcohol.

Veronica is fighting not to laugh, because honestly – it's sad and kind of touching how much Dick misses his friend. Keith and Mac aren't able to withhold half as well as Veronica though, and snorts of laughter spurt from their closed lips as they try to hold it together.

"Logan," Dick calls again, petting his tattoo's hair this time. He tries to kiss his own chest and rolls over instead.

Dick freezes for a second on his back, picks up a nearby trashcan, and hurls violently into it.

Mac makes a "_Yeaaagh_…" sound as they all look away from the screen.

"_Dick_," Trina demands, sounding horrified, sounding angry. "Put your clothes on. The men from the Navy are here to give us Logan's belongings."

Dick looks up at her as if he'll never remember that moment.

"Yeaaahhhokay," he slurs, then he throws up again. The camera tilts away and then pans back to the hallway, and they go to commercial break.

"Well that was informative," Mac comments.

Veronica feels torn. She is angry at Dick for going to Trina, but she feels so badly for him. She also feels bad for his liver. From what she remembers it's day eight of his "_trate-_ment" (his words) and she can only assume he's had so much grain alcohol in him that it's sort of a wonder he's still alive.

When Trina's program comes back on, she's sitting primly in front of the two Naval officers back in the living area and Dick is nowhere to be found. Trina is holding a folded flag in outstretched arms as if she's just accepted it from them, even as the officers shift uncomfortably in their seats, distracted by the overly warm lights shining on their foreheads.

"I accept this on behalf of grieving families everywhere," Trina states proudly, and Veronica feels sick to her stomach. What a mockery this is.

There's a commotion off camera and the frame slides to reveal Dick, who has stumbled into the room wearing two t-shirts. One he wears properly over his tattoo, and the other one as if it was pants, hairy legs shoved into the armholes.

"Got dressed," he brags. He looks deliriously drunk as he tries to take stock of the room. His eyes light up.

"Holy shit is that a flag?" Dick asks, distracted, like it would be totally hilarious if it was. He starts to laugh and vomits instead. They cut to commercial again.

"Oh my _gawd_ this is amazing," Mac says, laughter in her voice. Veronica sighs. "Do you think it's already been GIFed on the internet? I bet it has. If not I'm totally going to do it."

Veronica rolls her eyes, and a grin sneaks out in spite of herself. Her dad opens his mouth as if he's about to ask what a GIFed is when the program comes back on.

When they come back this time, Trina is looking misty eyed as she sits behind the giant knapsack that was Logan's luggage.

Veronica's heart tugs in wanting. She helped Logan pack that bag. She knows everything that's in it, and she knows it must smell like him and how comforting it would be to have his clothes returned to her instead. For a moment she lets herself be sad at the injustice of it all.

"These are the last belongings of my dearly departed brother, Logan." Trina opens the bag by its zip and touches the first item of clothing there – a familiar blue t-shirt Veronica can't believe she let him pack. She feels her throat go raw, and she pulls her knees into her chest.

"On behalf of the Veteran's Affairs Hospital Network, I have graciously decided to hold an auction in my brother's name. These clothes – his last belongings – will be auctioned for their cause."

Veronica stops breathing. Or she refuses to breathe. She can't believe what she's hearing. _What?_

"The auction will be available on the VA website until midnight Tuesday," Trina continues proudly. "Proceeds will go to wounded soldiers and their families everywhere in Logan's name."

Veronica is now _actually_ worried that she's going to throw up. Her gut feels cold and twisted as she stares blankly at the television, paralyzed by the information it's given her. Absently she's aware that her dad and Mac are similarly vacant, staring at the screen.

Trina starts expanding her screen time by pulling out Logan's items of clothing one by one, in some horrifically conceived presentation of what _fans_ could bid on.

Her dad finally stirs, mutters "_Fucking hell_," and moves to pour himself another drink. It breaks the spell, and Veronica's shoulders slump. She feels the urge to cry and fights it with anger and half-minded plots for vengeance as she glowers at the television. Mac, deflated, pulls out her laptop and starts multi-tasking.

Veronica is the only one who watches as Trina shows off every t-shirt and every pair of pants. Veronica is thinking that she can guess at least one person who's going to invest, and a shudder goes through her spine imagining Ruby Jetson fondling Logan's boxers. It's all so sickening. Her body feels so tight inside.

"Hey," Mac calls over her laptop like she's found something kind of funny. "Apparently only ten percent's actually going to charity. It says so right here at the bottom of the website."

She grins when Veronica meets her gaze because Mac finds it to be such a disgusting circus. She lifts her eyebrows with mock curiosity, asking Veronica to find it funny too. "Wonder where the other 90% is going?"

Everyone looks back at the screen.

"Just a few items left now," Trina says, as if she's revealing the big three prizes on The Price is Right. Veronica pulls her knees tighter against her chest.

Trina pulls out a carefully folded pair of cargo pants, but when she puts her hand back in the back, she pauses, as if she's not sure what she's feeling.

And then Trina pulls out what is so clearly a pair of ladies underwear that Veronica imagines the entire world is holding their collected breath.

Trina is looking at the black, lacy, stringy thing like it's the most horrific object she's ever seen.

"Are these…Logan's?" she breathes, and she looks directly into the camera as if it's just now dawning on her that she's trespassed so appallingly on his privacy and how surprisingly idiotic it was to film all of this.

Veronica's jaw drops, and no air is leaving her lips. Because the black, lacy, stringy thing hanging from Trina's pinched fingers is familiar to her. _It belongs to her_.

She feels the sudden urge to be appalled at Logan's audacity, particularly because she can visualize his ridiculous grin so easily. She imagines herself accusing him of thievery had she ever noticed the panties missing, and of Logan playing coy…things that never got to happen, and never will, now that he's dead.

A giggle comes from the screen, and just as she's wondering which of the burly US Navy guys had the nerve to laugh, the camera pans to the right, and the audience comes to realize that Dick has been there the whole time.

They've managed to shove Dick into a US Navy t-shirt and some swimming trunks, and Veronica does not envy the one who had to wrestle the clothes on a disastrously drunk Dick Casablancas. There's a stain on the shirt that looks suspiciously like it's come out of Dick's mouth in a bad way. He looks as if he'd been dozing in and out throughout the proceedings, but whatever producer was smartest thought to give him a sippy cup full of booze, because it takes more concentration to get it out and into his mouth. Dick is giggling like the whole thing's hysterical.

"Those belong to Veronica Mars," he explains proudly. There's a crinkling noise every time he moves because of the plastic wrap covering his tattoo. "Who knew good old V.D. had it in her, eh?" Dick laughs like he's got a great story to tell. "No look, I found them in the kitchen one night – don't want to know the story there – and put 'em in Logan's bag for safe keeping. Pretty smart huh?" His nose is wrinkled as he laughs, trying to get the other people in the room to laugh with him. He laughs for a good six seconds before he burps, then notices the camera seemingly for the first time.

"Holy shit are we on TV right now?" Dick stands and walks toward the camera. "Ronnie I stole your panties and gave them to Logan okay?" he says louder than is necessary. He puts his hand to his lips. "Shhhhhh don't tell. They're for his birthday."

Whatever comes next is like white noise to Veronica's ears. She's barely aware of the way Mac is cat-calling, while her dad tries not to laugh and look indignant instead. But it's funny. Veronica shares a smiling look with the other people in the room, as the television switches to black.

_An Echolls Family Funeral_…Logan would have loved it.

* * *

Looking at the sign in front of the US consulate, Logan can't help but wonder what will happen to him if this doesn't work.

They should've covered this in basic training. _Stranded in a Foreign Place 101_ would have been an accurate enough title, and if he'd been able to anticipate this exact moment of his life he would've been first in line to enroll. The introductory class would cover what to do if you find yourself in a strange country with no money, no ability to communicate with the locals, and no way to identify yourself as an American citizen. Logan's hands clench at his sides and he shakes his head, because he can't dwell on that now. He will believe that this will work, because there is nothing else to try.

It's his own fault. If he'd been able to keep it together enough, he probably wouldn't have broken that phone. When he thinks back, he realizes that he could've used a computer to look up Veronica's phone number. _Okay_, he relents, _hers is probably unlisted_. Keith's might've been available. He could at the very least have sent a few hundred emails with the amount of money he'd wasted on his one stupid fucking phone call. He could've waited in that internet café until someone had replied to him, and they could have made plans and he could be ecstatically anticipating seeing Veronica again instead of praying for fate's mercy in light of his idiocy.

Logan takes a deep breath and pushes open the front door. It's quickly getting dark behind him, and the florescence inside lets him know that it's almost closing time.

There isn't anyone at the front desk, so Logan pushes through into the interior office. He passes two uniformed guards who allow him to pass, and he acknowledges their presence with a tight smile.

Inside this bigger room is a long wooden counter, and beyond there is a collection of computers set up on wooden desks. None are occupied.

"Hello?" Logan calls out, because the guards are still there, and the lights inside are still on. It can't be just for the inanimate objects.

A woman pops her head out of a doorway near the back. It's one of two small offices he sees, and it's the only one that's lit.

The woman is round, with small eyes and coifed, but wilting hair. When she sees Logan at the counter he sees her quickly look behind him, as if checking to make sure they're not alone.

"Late night, huh?" Logan asks conversationally, to put her at ease. He's not sure why he feels the need to put her at ease.

The woman's shoulders lilt a little, making Logan realize she'd been holding them up.

"Can I help you?" she says instead, and her voice is sharp to Logan's ears.

"Yeah," he says, and there's a panicked gulp where he's not exactly sure what to say. They never taught him this in school. _Stranded in Foreign Place 102_ would cover how to talk to consulate staff. "I'm an American citizen and I need some help."

The woman's shoulders relax again, and Logan can see she was in the middle of putting on her jacket when he'd arrived. She starts to put an arm through its appropriate hole as she looks away from where he stands.

"Oh, well I'm afraid we're closing for tonight. You'll have to come back tomor—"

At first, Logan isn't aware of what made her stop speaking.

Then he realizes that he's started to laugh, because he can hear a voice chuckling and it sounds a lot like his. Recognizing his own voice makes him laugh twice as hard. He's so tired, and he's so hungry, and he's so scared. He's laughing so hard his sides ache. So hard that tears are threatening the corners of his eyes, and he wipes at them as he moves along the long counter and finds the little swinging door through to the other side. He tries to collect himself as he passes through, small giggles sputtering from his lips like dying last breaths.

"Ahh," he sighs. "I _can't_ come back tomorrow." His voice sounds so light to his ears because it's all just so fucking funny. "I have no money. I have no passport." He looks at her, and knows his eyes must look vacant and that he must sound like a crazy person. He just can't care one fucking bit about it. "I just found out today that not only am I apparently dead, but my girlfriend is pregnant and I don't know if it's mine."

He senses that his lips are smiling, and idly he wonders why.

"So I can't come back tomorrow."

The woman is staring at him, her small eyes wide. He senses that she really wishes she'd left early that day, and Logan really doesn't care.

"What's your name," she asks, finally.

"Logan Echolls," he answers, his voice pleasant, like maybe they're making progress and it's so nice of her to ask. Maybe he's losing it. Maybe he lost it six hours ago.

The woman's eyes pinch together in confusion, and she frowns. Then she appears to come to some sort of conclusion, and he watches as this woman almost rolls her eyes. _She almost rolls her eyes at him_.

"Yes, you and everybody else," she says, and she turns to look for her purse.

Logan feels his body unable to move. "Wait, what?"

"You're not the first person who's come in claiming to be Mr. Echolls," she explains, her voice a little too confident and sing-song. "We were briefed this morning about imposters, but I have to say, this is a nice try."

Logan fights the impulse to laugh again. He shakes his head, because he cannot believe what he's hearing.

"Are you _shitting_ me?"

The woman straightens, and looks at Logan with tight lips.

"There's no need to be rude," she says. "I understand that you'd want to be an American citizen, but honestly, there's a process for a reason."

"I know!" Logan shouts, and he's furious with himself for letting his anger get the better of him again. "Do you have any fucking idea how many wetbacks my family has employed during my life? How many of those we'd had to help navigate a fucking system just because they knew how to iron my father's fucking socks just right?"

The woman completely shuts down in front of him. Her eyes drop and she puts her purse against the floor, and she turns around and walks to her little desk and picks up her little phone.

"My name is Logan Echolls!" Logan shouts desperately. His voice is recklessly loud. "I was born March 20th 1987! My social security number is 108-95-7277! I'm a lieutenant in the US Navy unit VFA-213 aboard USS George HW Bush!"

The woman is using her phone to dial security, but clearly she doesn't need to. The commotion Logan is making is enough to draw them in anyway.

"Take my fingerprints!" he hollers, storming toward this woman with his arms outstretched. "Take my hair! Take my blood, take my fucking _SHIT_, man!"

He has no idea what to say to make his point. The two armed guards are flanking him, their arms snaking around each of his, and Logan knows what he's going to do before he even does it.

He yanks his arms back against the weight of these men, and he throws his first punch.

* * *

**TBC. If anyone knows Logan's birthday let me know X_X All I think I know is that it's after May and it shares a vowel with February. Next chapter…Tuesday? I think/hope? Ahh review if you can!**


	10. Chapter 10

**THE STILL POINT (OF A SPINNING WORLD)**, chapter ten  
by: AliLamba  
rated: T for language and themes  
notes: Another shorty :-/ This chapter is dedicated to all the toast shippers out there and in my heart. Also - thank you guys for reviewing this story xoxo I hope there are no illusions that I know _anything_ about the Navy or military life in general. I am a girl who simply loves the internet. The internet doesn't seem to always tell me things I should know unless I ask nicely first, but if you would like to be my volunteer military fact source I would pay you in fic X_X Honestly. I would write fic in your honor and I would make it smutty as heeeeell. No guarantees on decency, but I would guarantee word(s). That's maybe plural. PM me!

* * *

When her eyes open the next morning, the room is deceptively dark. Heavy curtains had been pulled across the windows the night before, so even though her bedside clock says that it's just past eight in the morning, by the look of the room it could have been just past three.

Veronica's learned over the past few days that her best female friend in existence is a very light, very noticeable snorer, and it's one of the reasons Veronica went to bed with a pillow over her face. She is the first one up, and she comes to listening to the soft, slightly raspy sound of her friend taking measured, deep breaths in and out.

Veronica stands automatically and goes through the motions of waking up. She visits the bathroom, sets up the coffee maker, and then goes to the door of their room to retrieve the morning's paper. It's going to be a busy day, she knows,

It's one of the hidden perks of hotel management, to charge you seven dollars for a three dollar newspaper, delivering to your door for free. Veronica knows it will be there when she pulls off the security chain and throws the deadbolt, and swings the door back into the room.

She stares down at the paper for a long time.

Her toes are cold, she observes. The coffee machine pings from inside the room, announcing that it has finished brewing.

Veronica still looks at the paper, waiting for its words to make sense.

_ECHOLLS GUILTY OF NEGLIGENCE._

The tidy subscript she can see from her vantage point is surreal. _Lieutenant Logan Echolls' investigation reveals pilot was at fault in fatal crash. For more, turn to page A3._

The next door down the hall opens, and her dad reaches out to grab his own paper before he notices his daughter trying to do the same.

Hiding his surprise, Keith looks to where his daughter is looking, and then at his own paper. She knows he's read it when he says "_Oh, honey_," so sadly, like he's sorry. She looks up at him, and there are tears in her eyes.

"You were right dad," she says, and then her feet shuffle the rest of her body into his room.

Her dad had started his own coffee pot, but it's still working as Veronica relieves it of mug's worth. She sits on the edge of the bed her dad hadn't used the night before.

As a youth, whenever she'd traveled with her parents, jumping between the two beds had been a right of room initiation. She's grown out of that now.

"How can it be Logan's fault?" she asks, vacantly.

Her dad just shakes his head above his open paper. He's busy reading through the article. Veronica almost wants to believe that she's read enough of it and doesn't need to hear anymore.

"They say that the diagnostic tests finally came back," her dad summarizes. "Skip Johnston is quoted in here, saying that it all basically boiled down to operator error."

"Basically?" The word sounds hollow.

Her dad looks at her seriously and then looks back down at his paper. His frown deepens with every passing few seconds.

"I don't know about this honey," he finally says. Veronica blinks. She looks down at the mug of coffee curled within her fingers and realizes she hasn't drunk any yet. Her worldview is starting to catch up to her, but the process is slow, like she's trudging through sand. She lives in a world where the man she loves died by his own hands. _No_, that can't be. Logan wouldn't do that to her. He wouldn't do it to their baby. _He didn't know about the baby_. But didn't she think of Logan as smart, and competent? Wasn't he an experienced pilot? Wasn't he hand-selected for this mission because of his prowess with that particular style of jet? Wasn't everyone jealous of him for being chosen to fly the newly improved F/A 18F? Tears are starting to billow inside her ducts and she knows it's only a matter of time before she'll need to retreat or lie down.

"Honey I just don't know about this," Keith repeats, and he draws her attention because she's forgotten about him. He's staring at her even though all his attention appears to be elsewhere.

"Wouldn't it make sense that Skip Johnston could have altered the results? Wouldn't it make sense that in doing so he's just saved his own ass?"

Veronica's gaze is sharpening. _What?_

"Honey, that old man's flabby white butt is on the line right now, and he just found the perfect scapegoat."

Veronica still doesn't understand.

"Yesterday we figured out that the man wasn't fired and should have been. This is how. This is why he still has his job. Because he can blame Logan for his own failings."

Veronica shakes her blonde head, her mind spinning. Her dad is making sense, but she is still so confused and so heavily emotional about it all. What had he said? Johnston could have organized this? This could be how he's keeping his job? It suddenly clicks. Veronica gasps. She squeezes her eyes shut and drops her forehead into her hands. _No_. She can't decide what to believe, but she knows what she'd rather.

"I'm going to go wake up Mac," her dad decides, and she hears him stand and cross the room, open the adjoining door and shout Mac's name.

Mac groans, and then there's a lot of whining and distant voices. Veronica looks up at the door to listen and hears her friend clearly say "No toast no work."

* * *

Forty minutes later Mac is looking a bit better than awake, a piece of buttered toast wedged between her lips as she chews and types at the same time. Veronica is sitting cross-legged, sharing Keith's unused bed with her friend, the newspaper open in front of her amid plates of barely-touched room service. Her dad is using his own laptop at the small table by the back window.

"Keith's right," Mac suddenly says, shattering the relative quiet of the room. Both Veronica and her dad scramble to see Mac's computer.

"…I found the official report."

Veronica tries to remember that breathing is an inherent and vital function for survival. Her eyes are trying to absorb what is on Mac's screen, but the document looks like a jumble of letters to her. Her heart is beating too fast inside her chest, and her brain isn't being properly oxygenated. Mac continues to explain: "You were right about Johnston being friends with the Under-Secretary. They agreed to let Logan take the fall after emailing this to each other yesterday."

Veronica can't pretend to read anymore. Her head drops, and for exactly three seconds she allows herself to feel viciously gutted. Then she tilts her head back up.

"Can you send me this?" she asks, because reading over Mac's shoulder is awkward and uncomfortable. Mac sighs.

"Already did. But take this if you want. I'm going to take a shower."

Keith goes back to his laptop as Mac heads back to the girls' room. Veronica hears the shower start and observes her dad reading silently before she can bring herself to look back at Mac's screen. The official report stares back at her, almost defiant in its clarity. She knows that reading this will be painful. Everything so far has been painful. Veronica takes a deep breath and folds herself back into a sitting position.

It starts with the usual shit_. Operation 318-009, sanctioned by Rear Adm Skip Johnston, COM. USS George HW Bush. Boeing test flight. Andaman Sea._

_Lt Logan Echolls, pilot._

Veronica's heart throbs in her chest.

_Preflight checks complete. COM Johnston gives the go ahead. Flight deck cleared for takeoff 1938 MMT. Pilot cleared for takeoff 1940. Pilot on the runway 1944. Take off 1944._

Veronica curls her fingers against her lips, and she holds in a breath.

_Pilot turns east 1945. Radio contact maintained. 1946, explosion seen off portside bow. Radio contact maintained. Pilot turns south 1947. Pilot down 1948. Radio contact lost._

Tears brim around the corners of her eyes. She doesn't care that her dad is in the room.

_Attempts to contact pilot failed 1949. Mayday called 1949, search and rescue initiated. HSC-9 contacted 1950. Pilots DeFolfe, Willis, Martinez and Harrington dispatched 1952. _

_2046 jet recovered._

A tear escapes, and snakes down Veronica's cheek.

_Initial observation of jet: hull open, pilot not recovered in jet. Search continues 2054. Command convenes. 2100 pilot declared missing at sea. Search discontinued 0145._

Veronica smears her fingers under her eyes to wipe away the tears. She scrolls down. The next page is a diagnostic report of the jet Logan flew. It's full of boxes and small typed words that have no literal meaning in Veronica's mind. Each phrase sounds vaguely mechanical, but there is a checkmark next to each one. She scans once, and then twice. She's looking for a box without a checkmark, but there isn't one.

"Are you on the diagnostic page yet?" her dad asks, drawing her attention. Veronica looks over her screen and sees her dad frowning at his.

"Yeah," she answers, her voice raw.

"I don't understand any of this crap," he complains. Veronica sighs.

"Neither do I."

There's a strained silence. "Am I to understand though, by all these check marks, that Kathy Gilmore was right? Everything _checked_ out?" It's an awful pun, but she's thankful for her dad for trying to cheer her up. Her dad smiles sadly at her, because he cares and he's confused. "Any chance Mac could understand any of this?"

"We can ask her when she gets out of the shower," Veronica suggests, wrapping her arms around herself and leaning back against the bed. The pillows absorb her weight.

When Mac comes back out ten minutes later, her wet hair flopped around her temples haphazardly, she frowns at Keith's screen.

"Do I look like a mechanical engineer?" she asks. She sounds a bit testy, and she quickly corrects her tone. She sighs. "Wallace might be able to help here, but honestly, I'm not sure there's a lot to read into. I think the diagnostic test revealed that the plane was safe. Johnston says as much in his email to Ristler."

"Ristler?" Keith questions. Mac taps on his keyboard. She brings up the email she'd sent to Veronica and Veronica's dad.

"The Under-Secretary. They exchanged a few nefarious emails over the week. Turns out Ristler is who Johnston contacted first after the jet went down, and yesterday when the report was finalized, Johnston suggested they blame Logan. Ristler goes along with it."

"Could someone have falsified the diagnostic report?" Veronica feels she has to ask.

"I don't see why Ristler and Johnston would feel the need to contradict a report that proved Logan _was_ at fault," Mac reasons. "What I got from the exchange was that Logan _wasn't_ at fault, but Ristler decided Johnston was allowed to keep his job and they needed something or someone else to blame anyway." She looks at Veronica quietly, considering what she wants to say next while biting the inside of her cheek. "I…think they figured out how they could get away with it. I mean, the idea of Aaron Echolls' son being a serious Naval aviator was always a bit, well, unbelievable. Unless you knew him, of course."

Veronica nods, her mind blank. She sniffs in a great wet sniff and rubs her nose, sitting up.

"I want to take him down," she asserts.

Mac presses her lips together, as if she already knew Veronica was going to say as much. She looks like she really doesn't want to say what she feels she needs to say in return.

"Not to be a buzzkill or anything, but my anonymity is sort of important to what I do for a living. If we go public with what we have already…it's just, I mean, there's no way they're not going to trace it back to me."

Veronica nods again. She's already thought of that. She's been thinking for the last fourteen minutes and the fourteen minutes have been good to her.

"Which is why we don't need to. I want him to tie his own noose. I want to catch him admitting to fraud. I want a fucking sound bite." Her voice is more filled with venom than it has been in a long time.

Mac frowns, not following Veronica's thought process. "This is where you tell me that you…like, have your own private satellite or something, right? Or…you're best friends with Johnston's neighbor or something… I just don't see how you plan on infiltrating the US Navy, abducting a Rear Admiral, and forcing a confession out of a 40-year-plus war veteran."

Veronica swallows against the lump in her throat. She doesn't take her eyes off her friend.

"No, we don't need any of that," she says. "Because we have Dick."

* * *

He is going to have to write these people a letter. Seriously.

"Dear cock-sucking shitheads," he drafts, continuing in his mind as he picks at his shoe with a dirty fingernail.

_Don't get me wrong, the food was great. You know service was a little slow but I understand. You guys were busy. And yes, let's be honest, the accommodations were a little weak, but you really made up for it in __spirit__. The daily beat downs were a great alternative to Western medicine for keeping your guests docile and well-behaved._

And to all those people who told him that prison was better in Burma? Oh, they were wrong. Two days had passed inside this cement cage, and it was two days of his life he would never get back. He might not speak the language, but he realized pretty quick that struggling against your captors while trying to shout your innocence didn't get you very far. He had the bruises and what he presumed to be a broken finger to prove it. Jail in Neptune was never this much fun.

He might actually donate to the annual Policeman's Ball back home if he ever gets out of here. If he ever gets out of here alive. Or he's dead anyway, right?

Logan sneers, anticipating the turn of his thoughts. The physical violence isn't what counts as torture here. Getting into fights with the guards is almost cathartic in comparison to the prison of his own mind, and the torture he meets out against himself when alone.

Logan leans his head back against his cell wall and searches the ceiling for answers. He wonders what his last will and testament looks like these days. He can't even remember the last time his lawyer had bugged him about it.

Veronica would get nothing. Her baby – their baby? – would get nothing. Logan closes his eyes tightly as his fingers curl into fists. _The baby_.

How is it that he's cosmically unable to save the women in his life? First Lilly…then his mom…then _Carrie_…and now Veronica. And Veronica's _baby_ for crying out loud… Every time he's had to stand idly by as tragedy walked right through his life and took everything with it. Logan drops his head into his hands and grips the roots of his hair between clenched fingers.

So much of him craves the ability to reach her. If she was here, he would be showing these guards his bare ass right now. No, he wouldn't be here to begin with.

God, he misses her. He thought he missed her before, when he would sleep in the safety of his bunk at night on the ship, fantasizing about her face and reliving every memory of Veronica he had. The good ones and the shitty ones – anything was better than being so far away.

Sometimes he'd imagine what she was doing. He would imagine how her dad was healing, how business at Mars Investigations was going. He would imagine her hanging out with Mac or Wallace, on stake outs, chasing down bad guys, getting the money shot like the plucky little Nancy Drew she is. He imagined her sleeping in, or making some disastrous form of dinner. He would imagine her in the shower. Sometimes, when he was really desperate, he'd wonder how she was doing with his car.

Those memories can't sustain him now. He's just so, fucking, tired, and his soul is so miserable, and his heart is so hopeless. Despite all previous run-ins with the law, he's never conceived of a life spent in jail before now. Now he can imagine it with frightening ease.

Veronica thinks of him as dead. The world thinks of him as dead. The US consulate imagines that he's an imposter…

Logan's expression twists together. He considers that if he writes enough letters, maybe he can change the consulate's mind. Maybe if he writes enough letters to Veronica, or to the Navy, eventually they'll stop thinking that his correspondence is some cruel hoax and actually consider the possibility that he's alive.

He wonders what the rationing is like for prisoners in Myanmar. One stamp a day? Two?

He laughs at himself hatefully, and hits the back of his head against the wall with enough force to hurt. It's his small punishment, the only one he'll be able to control himself.

_Oh, Veronica, if you could see me now…_

A small, hateful part of his soul wonders if she even misses him at all. It's the same part that wonders whether she's setting up a happy family with Piz right about now. He knows he's being an idiot, that this line of thinking is irrational, but when you're faced with nothing but time… Jeez, why not. Logan closes his eyes. He imagines Veronica with a big swollen belly, kissing Stosh Piznarski sweetly and not even pretending that it's him instead. That's what her life would have been like, if he hadn't been so selfish and called her back when he needed someone's help and no one else was on his side.

He knew Veronica would forever see him as some lame, kicked puppy. It's what made it so easy for her to leave him in the first place, nine long years ago. But he had called her back – for what – for legal advice? No, he called her back because he felt alone. He'd felt alone for nine long years without her, and when the loneliness finally got to be too much, well. It didn't matter that he was up against a murder charge, or that he was being publicly disgraced anymore. It didn't matter when he called her that she pitied him, and she knew enough about him to pity him in a legitimate way.

Logan balls his fists and throws a punch into the air because he _knows_ he's being ridiculous and that his thoughts don't reflect reality. He stands suddenly, ghost boxing with his abrupt burst of nervous energy. A shrink would have told him he was literally trying to fight the demons away, but Logan knows that's a fucking ridiculous notion.

Veronica loved him. She loves him. She told him as much. And this was his Veronica, right? The same one who couldn't let sleeping dogs lie. If there is anyone in the world he wants to have the knowledge of his death it would be her, because she is the only person in the world who wouldn't buy it. Right? …_Right?_

Logan hurls all his weight into a sucker punch to the air. He's been trying to avoid the math, because he doesn't want to know, but it's going on eleven days since his death now, and he can't decide what a good number of days would be enough to give up on. Twelve? Could he fairly give up on day twelve? Day twenty-nine?

What would happen if he got to day thirty and he was still in this shithole. What then. How could he not decide that by day thirty she had given up on him.

Logan hurls a fist at the cement wall with an anguished shout. He's going to die in here.

His knuckles burn where they've made contact, but he hurls them at the same place again, and then he hits the spot with his other fist. He throws punch after punch at the wall, trying desperately not to think. It's too much. Physical pain yearns to take the place of emotional. When the hurt of impact is shooting into his shoulders and his arms feel like rubber he finally stops. His breathing is wet and ragged, and frustrated tears are smeared under his eyes. Logan collapses onto the floor and puts his face into his bleeding hands, and lets himself cry. His shoulders pitch with each new sob as he misses her. He can't help but think, morosely, that he's nothing without her, and if he never sees her again he'll die from that alone.

He's scared. That's the honest truth. He's just so fucking scared.

* * *

**TBC. And now you must wait…**


	11. Chapter 11

**THE STILL POINT (ON A SPINNING WORLD)**, chapter eleven  
by: AliLamba  
rated: T  
notes: Ohhh man it is certainly time that we started working on that happy ending already JEEZ. Sorry about the break. The next chapter is huuuge so it'll be a bit of a wait for that one too. Also I sort of want the next chapter to be _perfect_, so.

* * *

Veronica is waiting.

She's never been able to wait very successfully, but she sits still for now. Soon the man she needs to meet is going to walk through her door, and she already knows she won't have enough time to question him. She'll have to be to the point, direct, and practiced. Veronica rehearses her questions in her head, but anxiously, the ninth or so time she repeats them internally, they begin to sound more like questions for herself.

_What have you done what have you done what have you done._

* * *

"No, we don't need any of that," she says. "Because we have Dick."

Keith is the first one to speak. "Wait. Dick? As in the one who dedicated his torso to Logan's memory Dick?"

Veronica chews on her lower lip. "That's the one."

Keith and Mac share a bewildered look.

Veronica takes a deep breath. "Dick being with Trina, that whole shit storm…" she starts to say, but it doesn't matter, so she shakes her head to clear it. She looks at Mac instead. "Look, Trina's documentary, or whatever you want to call it, how hard would it be to convince Skip Johnston to appear on her show?"

Mac stares back blankly. "I don't know…" she stumbles to say. "Really fucking hard?"

Veronica shakes her head. "I don't think so. I think Johnston has an ego. I think we should invite him to be interviewed about Logan's life and death and all that crap, and then catch him in a room and make him talk."

Mac and Keith glance at each other again, looking unsure, wondering which of them is going to have to point out the obvious flaws in Veronica's plan.

"If he's so obsessed with being promoted," Veronica continues, as if she's oblivious to them, "he'll jump at the chance for this sort of national recognition. He has the opportunity to become the face of Logan Echoll's Navy. The good guy. The one who gets to tell the world how valiantly Logan died and how much Logan always loved his good old commander. All that marvelous bullshit."

"This sounds like you've given it a lot of thought," Keith mumbles.

"And Trina!" Veronica cries, because moving trains don't easily slow down. "Trina would _love_ to have a Rear Admiral on her show, especially one who may be Under-Secretary to the Navy one day."

"Okay," her dad says, "slow down. We have to think this through."

Veronica lets herself be quiet, waiting instead for her dad and her friend to catch up. This is a good idea. She can feel it. If they were to corner the Rear Admiral at all it would be by doing something that would play right into his giant, stupid sense of pride, or his desire for recognition. At the very least he would be motivated to show up on Trina's show to help pad the lie surrounding Logan's death on a national stage.

Her dad is the first one to find a hole in her logic. "How would we even go about doing that?" he asks. "I thought the whole point was that we didn't want to reach out to Trina. I thought we were trying to lay low. Were you expecting to contact her, or be on her show, or something?"

"God no," Veronica says before she can help it. "But we have two very predictable people here, I think. I think it wouldn't be too hard to say…send Trina an email from the good Rear Admiral Johnston…" she looks at Mac for confirmation, and Mac more or less gives it, "…and maybe, send the good Rear Admiral Johnston an invitation from sweet Trina Echolls? Maybe we could suggest a meeting and let them think it was all their idea?"

Keith joins his daughter in looking at Mac. Mac sees them both looking at her, takes a moment to resign herself to her predictable use, and eventually, she sighs.

"You have no idea how easy it is to hack into someone's email these days. Honestly, I hope you both know that."

Veronica purses her lips as she thinks about that for half a second and decides to ignore it for now. Her emails aren't very interesting anyway. _Dear Logan, I miss you_ is nothing that would embarrass her. Certainly not anymore.

* * *

Everyone is huddled around Mac's computer. Mac at the keyboard, Veronica and her dad over each of her shoulders.

"Dear Mister Johnston…" Mac says aloud as she types.

"Say Admiral," Keith suggests.

"He's a Rear Admiral," Veronica points out.

Her dad gives her a grinning look. "Exactly."

Mac rolls her eyes and retypes what she's written. "Dear Admiral Johnston…" she says instead.

* * *

It was just way too easy. Within the span of three hours Mac is able to monitor the legitimate contact between Trina Echolls and Skip Johnston. Both agree the circumstances are very sad but that it would be important to the late Lieutenant Echolls' memory for them to meet. By the time Johnston and Trina's personal secretaries are figuring out logistics Mac is squealing like a much younger girl and calling Veronica a genius. When the email comes through that they would set up filming for the very next day her dad is giving Veronica a healthy pat on the back and telling her she's done a "good job."

Veronica tries to feel proud of herself too. Something is bothering her about the whole thing though, something she feels they may have not thought through. She can't put her finger on it, and no one else seems to notice it either, so.

"So how do you want to do it," her dad asks. "Where do you want to get him."

"What if we picked him up at the airport?" Mac suggests. "We could be his limo drivers. I've always wanted to drive a limo."

Veronica thinks that through. Her dad intervenes. "Nah, there's no way the Navy wouldn't cover his logistics to and from."

The room is silent for another pause as everyone thinks. They're predicting the natural progression of someone's day as they showed up to a film set for an interview. Wardrobe? No, he'd come in uniform. Green room? He'd have his bodyguards with him there. Ambush the taping? No, because it wouldn't be filming live; there'd be no point risking that kind of exposure and get an admission of guilt if the evidence could be burned after.

"Oh…" Mac speaks up again. She sounds like she finally cracked the case, or something. "Oh…yeah." Veronica lifts her gaze questioningly.

"Hey Veronica," her friend says with a voice both asking and already knowing. "How good would you say you are at make-up?"

Veronica's eyes go wide, as she soaks up Mac's line of thought.

"We'd get like four minutes at best," Veronica complains. "How long does it take to powder a bald man's head."

"I don't know!" Mac cries, like she's enjoying the imagery. After a collective beat, Mac and Veronica both look to Keith.

"Oh." He's not amused. "Very funny. Like I know."

Mac and Veronica both try to smother their resulting grins.

"I like that idea though," her dad admits. "It's a private room, probably going to be very little security. I bet we could get at least a few minutes with him in there if the set is busy enough."

Veronica's hope floats. "This is Trina. The set will definitely be busy enough."

* * *

Busy it is. Veronica tugs at her flat-ironed brown wig to make sure it properly covers her real hair. Combined with the strange, thick-rimmed glasses she's wearing, her face feels properly uncomfortable. Not to mention her body. She would have thought that the feeling of tape against her skin, and a microphone between her breasts would be familiar to her by now.

Even still, she has to focus as she navigates between the swell of people around Trina's beachfront home back in Neptune, California. It's a rental, but Veronica is guessing no one knows that or no one really cares. They've painted the walls, run lines and lines of electrical wire along the hardwood floor with very unforgiving tape, and installed enough artificial lights and camera equipment to require a second back-up generator. The circular drive outside the front of the house is full of trailers and temporary work pods. It's not at all difficult to park their own pod amidst the rest, funds courtesy of Mars Investigation.

Mac is dressed like a grip, all bulky equipment belts and dark clothes. She wears a hat pulled down over her distinctive hair. Her dad is dressed similar to Veronica. He's got a fussy wig on his head that he itches at every nine seconds, and some very thick sunglasses. The con they're setting up is pretty simple, and they're hoping that simple is what works.

They put their proverbial heads together to sync their proverbial watches at 1500 hours. Through continued monitor of his emails, they know Johnston is due to land at the airport by 1504, with the interview between Johnston and Trina scheduled for 1550. Considering the half hour drive from the nearest airport, they estimate they'll get no longer than five minutes with him. Veronica is breathing heavily through her nose. She's done an untold number of information gathering ploys just like this, but for some reason, her nerves are on fire. She wishes the whole thing was over already.

Mac disappears out the door to get a lay of the land at 1502. She'll be the eyes and ears on the ground. The benefit of having Mac dressed as a tech person is that she can inconspicuously carry a walkie-talkie. Veronica and her dad are listening from inside their pod when Mac radios at 1510 that Johnston is en route.

Veronica is barely able to reply with a _copy that_ sort of response. She and her dad don't speak to each other. Familiar nerves are curled in each of their bellies anticipating their performances. 1510 turns into 1516, which turns into 1520. At 1522 Keith gives his daughter's shoulder a squeeze and he too leaves the pod. It'll be his job to intercept Johnston's entourage and direct them to Veronica's location.

At 1530 Veronica turns on her music. It's a blaring techno station, and for a second she's reminded of Hearst College, and being chased through hallways by a crazed rapist. The music is loud. It's keeping her from throwing up.

She sits. And she waits.

* * *

It's 1539. Veronica knows this because she hears her dad's voice outside the door and he's talking loudly for her benefit. The words are hard to hear through the techno and her own blood rushing through her ears, but she catches words like _Won't take a second_ and _Oh there is just no room inside I'm so sorry short notice_.

The door opens and suddenly Rear Admiral Skip Johnston is right in front of her. He doesn't look his age. He looks younger, like he could take her in a fight. Veronica's heart is hammering in her chest. Keith and two men dressed in uniform are right behind him, and for barely a second panic seizes Veronica. She has to focus. She has to be calm. She has to be in character.

"What is this!" she shrieks, throwing her hands in the air.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Keith explains. "I tried to tell them they wouldn't all fit but they wouldn't listen."

"Get out!" she yells at them, letting the blaring music fill any empty spaces in the room. "Get out and let me work!"

There's a flutter of noise and objections and movement as four men too big for the room struggle to fit. Johnston is ruffled and frustrated, and he's the one who eventually barks orders for his body guards to stand outside the door. Keith sends a small hidden smile to his daughter as he apologizes profusely and helps see the gentlemen guards out.

"_Can you turn this music down?_" the Rear Admiral shouts, and Veronica struggles not to feel pleased with herself.

"I'm afraid not," she explains, not at all sorry. "The artist must work, your honor, and the artist must work now. Sit!" she yells, directing him into the chair.

The Admiral's dark eyes are sharp as they assess her. She knows calling him _your honor_ will help stroke his ego. She knows that being put into a makeup chair to be pet and fussed over will pad his ego too.

Johnston takes the chair in front of the mirror. Veronica sweeps around him, throwing a half-sized drape over his chest as if to start working. It's laced with a microphone that will sit just beneath his chin.

The Rear Admiral closes his eyes, and she can tell he feels gravely important. This is her chance.

She practiced this move twenty-eight times on her dad.

Veronica stands right in front of Skip Johnston, grabs the open handcuffs hanging from each arm rest, and claps them on Johnston's wrists at the same time.

His eyes open immediately and Veronica darts out of the way as he tries to stand.

She rushes to the door and opens it, the mess of sound from inside bleeding into the surrounding area with her.

"The Admiral!" she complains with vigor to her dad and the guards outside the door. "He is so difficult!"

She slams the door behind her as she pulls herself back inside. Johnston is yanking against his enclosure and shouting at her like a rabid dog.

So she tasers him.

Back in the hotel they'd agreed no more than thirty thousand volts. She gives him the full fifty.

The Rear Admiral is immediately stiff and falling back against his chair, his teeth gritted against a ragged yell as the electric pain shoots through him.

Veronica takes a stance right in front of him. She rips off her glasses so she can see him properly, because she's afraid she's going to start crying. She cried a few times in practice.

"I'm going to give you one chance," Veronica tries to say, and her voice is trembling. "I'm going to give you one chance to save your own ass."

"What are you talking about," he says, and his voice is harsh and cruel and strained against the residual pain in his body. "Who are you! Who do you think you are!"

Veronica can't believe he pulled a _who do you think you are_ out of his butt. She clenches her jaw and fights the urge to taser him again.

"Logan didn't kill himself. It wasn't his fault that the plane went down."

Johnston's eyes widen slowly. In all her experience, this is the moment that Veronica has always had the least amount of patience for. This is the point of recognition, when her target realizes who she is and their muddled brain takes the extra six seconds to put the pieces together. She doesn't have six seconds to spare.

"You…" he starts to say. "You're the girlfriend. You're the one Adams met with."

"Yes I'm the girlfriend," she says, and her voice shakes again when she says it. "And I know that Logan didn't make a mistake. I saw the report."

His old eyes sharpen. "What report," he probes.

Veronica's lips twist together. "You know the one. The real one. The one that proved that there was nothing wrong with Logan's plane and he didn't do anything wrong in piloting it."

"How did you get that," he says instead.

"It doesn't matter how!" she cries, and then she realizes she needs to keep her voice down. "It just matters that it exists." she insists, more in control of her voice.

Johnston glares at her for two full seconds. "Yeah, so it exists," he admits, and Veronica feels relief sag throughout her shoulders. "So what.

"So what if it exists. You'll never prove it. It's your word against the United States' Navy, you little bitch, and who do you really expect to win in that fight?"

Veronica laughs humorlessly. "I don't expect anything anymore."

She looks him square in the eye. "Why did you pick Logan."

His brow twists together with rage. "Echolls?" he yells through gritted teeth, and Veronica hopes she won't have to taser him again because she's afraid she'll stop his heart if given the chance. "I didn't want Echolls! You think out of all the pilots I had I would pick that fucking rich boy?"

Her mind reels, and she has to counteract it by narrowing her eyes. "If you didn't pick him who did."

Johnston grits his teeth together and mutters something underneath his breath. "You'll never get away with this," he taunts. "In five seconds my guys are going to come bursting through that door and you'll be under martial law before they have time to smack you to the ground."

Veronica holds her taser out toward him and flicks it on for good measure. Johnston's eyes reflect the glowing electricity.

"Why did you approve the mission," she asks instead. Two minutes left.

"Why do you think," he snarls in response. Veronica inhales a short steadying breath.

"I think you approved the mission because you wanted a promotion. I think you diverted your fleet to the Andaman Sea, booked a private mission with Boeing, made sure the Under-Secretary knew what you were doing and just let everything go."

"How do you know all of this!" he growls.

"So it's true then?"

He's too lost in thought to be careful. "Would I be so fucking pissed if it wasn't?" he seethes. "How do you know this!"

"A simple yes would suffice."

"Yes!" he rages, and Veronica has to remind him to keep his voice down with another shock from her taser. His whole body trembles as he lets out fragmented, guttural noises of pain.

"You killed him!" she rages back. "You put him on that jet even though you knew the consequences! He's dead because of you!"

There's a knock on the door that makes Veronica's head spin toward the sound. Her dad sticks his head inside looking panicked.

"Everything okay in here?" he calls out, his eyes reading _What the fuck are you doing keep it together we have thirty seconds at best._

Veronica is crying again. Her tears are bursting from her eyes as sobs wrack her lungs. She holds the taser at her side, wanting to use it again, and her dad leaps inside the second she raises her arm toward Skip Johnston.

Her dad isn't careful as he pushes her into a wall, wrestling the taser from her hands, as Johnston pulls himself together enough to shout for his men.

"_We have to go_," her dad says hurriedly, redundantly, before he grabs her around her waist and pulls her with him to the door. Veronica doesn't care. Nothing matters anymore. Her dad has the good sense to grab the drape from around Johnston's neck as he passes. Everything is hitting at once. The door opens in front of them, and the two guards are looking confused, hunting for their master. Her dad kicks one in the groin and shoves whatever electricity is left in the taser into the other, hauling his daughter past them in one of his arms.

"Honey you have to stand!" he yells, dropping her body and grabbing her hand instead. He drops the taser to the ground and pulls her into the crowd at a run, darting around equipment and nameless employees as they escape to the road outside the Echolls estate. He has to let go of her hand to run properly. Veronica struggles to find her own legs, running after her father, focusing all her attention on the back of him as she cries. Her legs barely work they feel so weak beneath her, but they move.

Suddenly she realizes there's someone running alongside her. She gasps, frightened as she looks to the side, readying herself to lash out against the threat.

But she recognizes this person. It's Wallace. It's _Wallace_.

"Wallace!" she cries and she's so happy to see him it's hard to run at the same time. Her dad swings his head back in time to shout: "_You get the stuff?_"

Wallace grabs Veronica's hand as he shouts "_Yeah!_" back to her dad, and together Wallace and Veronica run toward the road. Keith's sedan is coming into view now, and Veronica starts to think that they're going to get away with it, _they're actually going to get away with it_.

She feels so dizzy and lost in the world. Her hand is in Wallace's. Her dad knew he was going to be there. She wrenches open the car door and throws herself inside, and Wallace clambers in after her. With her dad in the front passenger seat Mac sinks her foot on the gas pedal, and the tires squeal as the car jumps into a maddening sprint.

"Wallace!" Veronica cries, wanting to collapse against her friend. He's busy trying to put on her seatbelt because she's too far gone to do it herself. He spares her a proud grin.

"You forget about me?" he jokes, putting on his own seatbelt as Keith's car jumps lanes.

"What," she struggles to make sense of him, "how," he's grinning at her like he's enjoying her confusion, "What are you doing here?"

Keith turns around in the front seat. He looks exhilarated. The wig left some angry red scratches on his head, but he looks thrilled with himself.

"That would be the brilliance of Mac and I," he brags, breathless, and Veronica still doesn't understand. Her mouth flaps open and closed uselessly as she tries to form words. "What," Keith complains, "you think I would let just anyone have my daughter's underwear? Mac and I put the pieces together after you went to bed last night." From the corner of her eye she sees Mac searching the rearview mirror to make excitable eye contact with her friend.

Veronica is speechless. She looks at Wallace. "We decided not to tell you in case the plan didn't work," he finishes, and Veronica can't believe the people in her life. She is so thankful for them.

"So," she searches for solid ground. "So, it worked? Logan's…Logan's stuff?" she tears up again. "You guys got me Logan's stuff?"

Her dad moves in the front seat and pulls a giant army green duffel bag over his head. "Huzzah!" he shouts, like it's his own personal victory party.

The car swerves as Mac's space is intruded.

"Jesus fucking _Christ_, Keith!" she shouts. "Careful!"

Her dad has the decency to sound abashed, even though he doesn't look it. "Sorry." He pushes the bag into the backseat and into Veronica's lap.

Veronica can't believe the love of the people in her life. No other girl in the world could possibly be so lucky as to have three people like Mac, Wallace and Keith work so hard on her behalf.

She punches Wallace in the arm.

"You scared the shit out of me!" she wails, and Wallace is kind to pretend that she actually hurt him as he laughs.

The farther away from Neptune they drive, the higher their spirits soar. They bring Wallace up to speed.

"Let me get this straight," he says after a decent forty minutes of explanation, all trademark Wallace and so much so that Veronica's heart almost bursts with affection. "This guy, Johnston, made a secret deal with Boeing to test out an improved version of Logan's jet. Then he had to go all secret about actually pulling it off, especially after it all went to hell, probably because he was getting some sort of kick back from Boeing to do it."

The car, once animated, is now suspiciously unresponsive.

"Well, no, no one paid Johnston to do it," Veronica says, confused by Wallace's assumption. "Johnston did it for the potential glory. He's friends with the Under-Secretary to the Navy. We think the Secretary of the Navy is going to retire soon, meaning the Under-Secretary will take his place and leave an empty seat. If Johnston was able to pull off a high-stakes mission that would help Boeing keep their Navy contract, we figured he would be in a good position to take the Under-Secretary's position."

Wallace absorbs that information for awhile. Veronica, Mac and Keith do too.

"I dunno," Wallace says. "If it were me I would want to get paid."

Veronica frowns. "Well, in any case, they made the biggest error in trying to tell the world that Logan was responsible for the plane crash. We finally got ahold of the diagnostic report for Logan's jet, and by every account it was fine. Logan didn't do anything wrong." Veronica pulls out her laptop and rests it on top of Logan's bag, which is nestled between Wallace and herself like a makeshift table. She likes having it close to her, and had refused twenty minutes ago when Mac offered to pull over and let Veronica put the bag in the trunk with the rest of their stuff.

She pulls up the official incident report, and watches Wallace read it for awhile before she decides to look away. Reading that once was enough. The details still burn in her memory.

Wallace frowns deeply as he clicks through, and eventually he shakes his head.

"Veronica, the plane checked out."

She nods. "Yeah, we figured that out." Her mouth pokes up into a small grin. "Without you, I might add."

Wallace looks like she's missing something obvious. "If the plane checked out then why did it crash?"

Veronica's mind goes blank. "What?" she asks, as if she's asking herself, gaze drifting out of focus as she tries to find an answer to his question. Her mind is feeling muddy with information that she looks at for a second time. But Wallace is right. The plane checked out – they all knew that. But Johnston and the Under-Secretary had both agreed to blame Logan even though he wasn't at fault either. Hadn't he said that? Hadn't Johnston said that Logan wasn't at fault?

Veronica looks up and makes eye contact with her dad. He looks almost as stunned as she feels inside.

Anticipating her next move, Keith passes her the bib that holds the audio from Veronica's interrogation and she loads it onto the laptop.

Noise is suddenly filling the car. There's techno and shouting and big crashing sounds that make everyone wince and cover their ears. There's a lot of shouting back and forth as Veronica starts to question him.

"_Yeah, so it exists,_"an old man says."_So what._"

Veronica stops the recording. "See? He just agreed that I was right, that Logan wasn't at fault in the crash."

Wallace is still putting together the pieces as if something still doesn't add up.

"I don't know V," he says. "Something still doesn't make sense to me."

Veronica sinks into her seat, feeling not at all settled. Does Wallace have a point? Have they missed something?

Her phone is ringing.

Veronica's mind feels hazy even as she acknowledges that there's a sound in the car that requires her attention. She doesn't want to answer her phone just now. She wants to think instead, and wonder if Wallace is making more sense than they'd made already. Yeah, something is off, but the whole thing is off. Logan is _dead_ – that's off for starters. Veronica brings her fingers to her lips and bites on her fingernails absently, because it lets her mind be distracted by thought.

Her phone stops ringing. A second later it starts to ring again.

"Veronica would you _answer that honey?_" her dad asks, making her realize that he's annoyed now, his good mood forgotten. He must be consumed by thought too, trying to reexamine everything.

"There's no one I want to talk to right now," she says dismissively, and the phone stops ringing again.

When it starts to ring a third time everyone in the car is audibly annoyed.

"Veronica will you answer that _please!_" Keith shouts from the front seat.

He turns to look over his shoulder so he can glare his meaning across. But he immediately forgets what he's annoyed about.

His daughter is staring at her phone. Her eyes look vacant, as if she's lost track of where she is.

"Veronica!" he shouts again, and then he takes a moment to look at Wallace who's sitting next to her. Wallace looks like he's in a similar stupor; his eyes are soft and open, his lower lip just barely sagged as he's looking at Keith's daughter. Specifically, he's looking at Keith's daughter's ringing cell phone.

Veronica looks up, and immediately catches her father's eye.

"Who's calling you!" he asks louder than he would like.

She takes a shallow breath, and looks terrified.

_Oh no_.

"It's Logan."

* * *

The car goes silent. Mac is the first to recover, and she does so by swerving into the shoulder off the highway and putting on her hazard lights. She turns to look over her seat at Veronica. All eyes are on her now.

"You better answer it honey," Keith says, his voice bated, and quiet.

Veronica swallows a dry lump in her throat. She's struggling to believe that this person calling her could actually be Logan, but logic is scattered in her brain right now. She barely knows which way is up she feels so lost in the world, and she traces Logan's name with her eyes as it shows up on her phone. She taps the green button that would answer the call, and brings the phone up to her ear.

"Hel…" she tries to say once. "Hello?" Her voice is so soft.

"Veronica."

It's not Logan. But it's a voice she recognizes. It's Kathy Gilmore. Veronica's eyes widen.

"Veronica I need you to listen to me—"

"I'm here," she says automatically. Her heart is racing in her chest. _It's not Logan. It's Kathy Gilmore._

"I don't have a lot of time," Kathy says. "But I needed to tell you. _I have Logan's phone_. Secretary Ristler is on board – the Under-Secretary, of the Navy." She's starting and stopping like she's walking at the same time, checking over her shoulder, almost as if she's running from something.

"It was crazy for him to show up all of a sudden – and he wanted to meet with all of us in person!" Kathy gasps in a sharp intake of breath seeing something Veronica can't. "It was crazy, and it didn't make any sense! And I go in there, and he has to leave to take a call, and sitting on his desk, it was just sitting there Veronica – Ristler had Logan's phone. I recognized it. I made fun of him for it." Kathy's voice is impossibly hurried now, small scrapes of noise in the background filling in any gaps of her speech. Veronica wants to tell her that _she_ doesn't make any sense, and she grips the phone to her ear with both hands and squeezes her eyes shut as if it'll make her hear the woman better.

"And I was thinking about how you called and I've been thinking so much about Logan's death lately – and, and," Kathy is stumbling to find words and Veronica is stumbling to follow her but it's hard, it's really hard, and she searches the faces of the other people in the car as if they'll be able to help her understand.

"Veronica, something doesn't make sense! Why do I have Logan's phone? What was it doing in Secretary Ristler's office?"

Veronica has no idea. She wants to say so, but she's worried if she interrupts Kathy she won't hear everything she needs to. _Kathy has Logan's phone. His real one._ "I—"

"What was he doing with it? I thought he was here to visit his son, to pick him up, but he was here to talk to us about Logan! And _why would he have his phone?_"

Veronica's eyes can't get any wider. She has no idea why Kathy is so obsessed by the fact that they took Logan's cell phone. She can't _believe_ Kathy Gilmore from Oklahoma with son Ryan and daughter Jennifer would have done something as rash and stupid as to steal Logan Echolls' phone.

"_Veronica there's something I have to tell you_." Her voice is desperate now. She is breathless, like she's been repeating the same questions to herself for so long that they don't seem crazy anymore. "The suits they make us wear – they're equipped with tracking devices."

The world, the very same world that Veronica has been living in for so long, tilts ever so slowly on its axis. Logan's suit was bugged.

"They'd know where we were even if we were 5,000 feet below water. _How is it possible that they never recovered Logan's body_."

It's too much. The information is too much. Veronica feels like a person observing her body. She is holding a small plastic and glass object to her ear, and sound is coming from it. She sits inside of something made of metal, and plastic, and glass, and there are warm bodies all around her. Instinctually, she knows what she is hearing, but it so alters the tender balance of her mental state that it is almost too much to comprehend.

"Last year, Manny Hernandez fell overboard and got swept under. They tracked his body for _two weeks_ before they recovered it. Two weeks! Someone _knows_, Veronica! Someone knows where Logan is and they're not telling us. _Don't you see?_"

Veronica opens her mouth, as if to speak. She can't speak. Her heart is singing in her chest, a strange scary melody bleeding into her veins. Logan is alive. Logan is alive. Logan is alive.

"He's _alive_, Veronica! Why else would they declare him dead like that! Why did they call off the search so _quickly!_ It doesn't make any _sense!_"

Kathy takes a loud, shaky breath. Like she wants to start crying but she won't. "Logan – he, he reminded me of my son. Ryan died two years ago. It was a drunk driver. It wasn't his fault, and it wasn't mine, but I live with the guilt of not being there for him every day. Veronica, I—" she stops talking, and tears leak from Veronica's eyes. "_Find him_."

Veronica nods, her world crumbling around her. "I will," she whispers. The phone suddenly erupts with noise. There's a clang, like a door opening, and then there are voices shouting over one another. Veronica tries to make sense of everything coming through the phone but she can't. Her hands hold the phone to her head as she calls Kathy's name, but the noise is too loud, and then there is no noise at all.

_Logan_.

* * *

**TBC.**


	12. Chapter 12

**THE STILL POINT (ON A SPINNING WORLD)**, chapter twelve  
**by:** AliLamba  
**rated**: T  
**notes**: Thanks to SiriSunrider, who is responsible for this chapter getting posted today. If it weren't for her and everyone else who made it clear they enjoy this story, I might have toiled forever trying to make this chapter perfect in a way it might never be. In any case, I hope you enjoy it. It's a long one, and it's a long time coming. So please make some tea, curl up somewhere cozy, tell everyone to leave you alone for half an hour, and…enjoy :-)

* * *

Veronica, Mac, Wallace and Keith are deciding where to park outside of San Francisco International Airport with a certain amount of trepidation. After some consideration during the last twenty-odd hours, they've decided to trust their own passports to get to Yangon, Myanmar, but no one's very happy about it. It was Keith's idea to wait and buy their tickets at the last second in case someone was monitoring their travel plans, and to fly out of SFO instead of LAX to avoid onlookers. Mac was put in charge of buying tickets, so while Keith drives around the long-term parking lot, Mac is cursing and tapping furiously on her tablet.

"There's no way we're getting there in less than 40 hours," Mac complains, her eyes riveted to the screen. "Why is it that on the way back we can make the trip in 26 hours, but on the way there it'll take almost twice as long? _Fuck_."

Wallace turns around in the front seat and looks poised to explain something about wind. Veronica silences him with a _Don't piss off the one with the money_ look.

"I saw that," Mac groans. She looks at Veronica. "Logan's going to pay me back, right."

Veronica bites her lip. _If he's alive, then yeah_.

It is totally stupid, spending close to ten grand on round trip tickets halfway across the world based only on the beliefs held by one person. Or four people, now, as Kathy's relayed theories had convinced Keith, Wallace and Mac that Logan is sitting on a stump somewhere waiting for rescue.

Veronica doesn't count herself similarly impressed, anymore.

She knows what is holding her back from believing the same now. Hope is a dangerous, dangerous thing, and the words her dad once warned her with are still running through her head. _What are you going to do if we go through all of this and at the very end nothing changes. What if we spend the rest of our lives trying to get to the bottom of this and it turns out that Logan is still dead._

Isn't this sort of thing exactly what he worried about? She watches her dad look for parking through his rearview mirror. Why is he so positive then? What makes him so sure that Logan is alive, when Veronica has so many doubts?

Or fears?

Fears may be a more appropriate word.

* * *

No one really calms down until they're all sitting in front of the gate, trying to decide how to kill the next hour and a half before their flight. Mac lives up to her stereotype by pulling out her laptop. Veronica wants to do some digging of her own, but she's too full of nerves to think straight, so she spends most of her time zoning out and jumping whenever someone says her name. Wallace and Keith try to nap.

There's a TV on nearby playing CNN non-stop. Veronica's attention drifts in and out where it's concerned, until the anchors mention that they'll be interrupting their regular broadcast to air _An Echolls Family Funeral_ at 7 pm. Then she finds it hard to focus on anything else.

By 6:57 Wallace, Mac, Keith and Veronica are all huddled in front of the TV. Mac grips Veronica's cold hand as if to shield them from whatever fresh torture Trina has in store. They both know this episode won't feature Rear Admiral Skip Johnston.

_It's Logan's funeral._

Veronica feels it like a punch to her gut, because she'd forgotten all about burying him. She forgot that he was due to have a military burial arranged with Trina and Logan's brother.

Trina hadn't forgotten. Veronica prepares to get righteously angry at whatever circus Trina has turned her brother's funeral into, but when the screen fades from black, only a few people fill the frame. When the camera focuses on Trina's face, she isn't fake crying. She almost looks distracted, like she isn't even aware that the cameras are there. Trina is swathed in black, in the middle of some sunny field with rows and rows of plain white tombstones lined out in every direction. There are maybe a dozen other people in attendance, and Veronica feels her heart tug, because each of them looks legitimately sad. They're all standing around an empty grave while a holy man begins a prayer.

It's all almost…dignified. It would be completely dignified if it weren't for Dick, who is sitting on the ground like a tired toddler who wants to go home, sobbing uncontrollably.

Veronica feels a grudging respect that Trina was able to remember her brother in this modest, almost heartfelt way. She chews on her lip as she imagines, for the first time, what Trina must be feeling in this moment. Brother gone, parents gone…the Echolls family had been through too many funerals. A part of her anger at Trina fades.

The episode is short, because Logan's service is short. The pastor speaks for a while, and then the camera lingers on Logan's tombstone for a long time. The whole thing is over and done within a matter of twelve minutes, making Veronica wonder whether something was left in the editing room. She sighs when it's finished, conflicted in her emotions. A part of her almost wants to call Trina, and not because she's still mad at Logan's sister for making the documentary in the first place or trying to auction off Logan's clothes…but because she wants to tell Trina that she's sorry for her loss. It's a strange idea to reconcile with all the anger she's used to feeling.

When the CNN anchors come back on the screen they look similarly confused, and they launch immediately into a lengthy analysis Veronica doesn't want to listen to. Her attention drifts as her selective hearing tunes it out. Her companions feel similarly inclined, and one by one they resume other activities.

Veronica doesn't typically make a habit of reading over people's shoulders, but she finds herself drawn when the name _Eli Navarro_ catches her eye on Mac's screen twenty minutes later.

"You're emailing Eli?" she asks, almost embarrassed because she'd totally forgotten about him.

"Yeah," Mac explains, sounding a bit hesitant. "He wrote to me – well, he wrote to you too – after everyone found out. I sort of forgot to keep him in the loop before the news broke. He tried coming to the house but we were way gone before he got there. I've been keeping him up to date since."

Unease swirls in her belly before Veronica knows why. Mac anticipates her thoughts. _You have no idea how easy it is to hack into someone's emails these days. Honestly, I hope you both know that._

"Well, you know, in as many words as I can. I trust Eli and I know he cares about you, but I just really don't trust his computer," Mac says with a sigh. Veronica feels the urge to roll her eyes as the panic leaves her before she'd really recognized why it was there. Of course Mac judges people based on their technical aptitudes.

* * *

The crowds around the gate start to swell twenty minutes before boarding, and Veronica, Keith, Mac and Wallace have to squish together to avoid people invading their space. They'd booked two economy seats and two first class seats for their trip to Hong Kong en route to Myanmar, taking the only spots left on the crowded flight.

Veronica feels herself getting more and more nervous the closer they get to boarding. She's been on edge – they all have – since leaving Trina's house the day before. They're worried about Johnston and rightfully so. They've played their hand, and now it is Johnston's turn, and he has the power of the US government to detain her and everyone she associates with. It's a confusing miracle they've made it as far as they have already without Johnston putting out a warrant for their arrest.

She jumps when her phone rings. Wallace, Mac and Keith catch her eye for reassurance before she looks at the screen. Recognizing the name, Veronica smiles in spite of herself and closes her eyes, shaking her head to mitigate the fears of her friends.

"Hi Dick," she says, after she answers the phone and puts it against her ear.

"Hey Ronnie," he answers, sniffling. He sounds more sober than he has in ages.

She's not sure why he called. "You okay?"

He sniffles again. "Yeah," he says, as if he doesn't really believe it, as if he's doing _okay enough_ considering the circumstances. "I didn't see you at the funeral today."

Veronica's lips soften sorrowfully, and she looks down at the ground. "Can you blame me?" she asks, meekly.

There are some noises coming from Dick's throat that melt her heart. "I guess not." He takes a deep breath and sighs. "It just would've been nice to see you, I guess. I'm getting pretty tired of Trina and her bullshit."

Veronica nods, though she knows he can't see her, and stays silent. Dick is also silent.

"How's your treatment?" she says, for something to say.

Dick snorts into the phone. "Not great. Been puking my guts up for the past thirty-six hours. Ugh, and you would not believe the tattoo I got. I don't even remember getting it. I'll send you a pic later. Or - are you coming home soon?"

Veronica looks up and away. "I don't know, Dick." There's so much more to say. There's so much he doesn't know, that she wants to tell him. It seems almost cruel to keep him out of the loop like they are.

"Dick," she starts to say, and she already regrets what she's about to say. "Logan's alive."

She wishes she hadn't told him that. She wishes she hadn't told him that because she doesn't quite believe it herself. Mac, Wallace and Keith are looking at her wide-eyed, like they can't believe what she said either. She doesn't indulge their questions, and looks away.

"He's _what?_" Dick finally says, and his voice is far away.

Veronica takes a deep breath. "He's alive."

There's a now-familiar squeak on the phone as Dick start to cry again. "Since _when?_" Dick finally whines, and his voice sounds accusatory, like he's mad at himself.

"I don't know Dick," Veronica answers, sympathizing. "He's lost in Myanmar somewhere. We found out yesterday. Dick, we're getting on a plane. We're going to go get him."

She hears him sniffle on the other end of the phone as Dick tries to control himself. "Good," he squeaks. "Because I'm starting to get prank calls from imposters, Ronnie, and it's really wearing me out, you know?"

Dick's sadness pulls at her heart. She can't believe people would do that to him, knowing how close he was to Logan. _The cruelty of people_, she observes, letting herself be mad on Dick's behalf.

"I'm sorry about that, Dick," she says.

Dick laughs, humorlessly. "Yeah well at least now I have a fake number to give chicks that I'll actually remember. The last time I was trying to blow a girl off after sex, I ended up giving her 1-800-Mattress Discounters."

Veronica's mouth opens, and she has nothing to say.

"That was dumb," Dick reflects in retrospect, as if he's reliving the bimbo's fury all over again. "But let me know how it goes, okay?"

"Of course Dick," Veronica assures him, a small smile creeping around the corners of her mouth from the images Dick so unfailingly elicits.

She hangs up, staring at her phone for a long minute. There is something about the way Dick got off the phone so quickly – something unnerving, and she has a feeling he's searching for a bottle of tequila right now.

"Are you sure that was such a good idea?" her dad is the first to ask. Veronica bites her lower lip, reliving her conversation. She looks up at her dad knowing that she is still sad inside.

"Yeah," is all she says, and it's such a sure sound that the conversation is dropped.

* * *

Mac and Veronica take the first shift in first class. They hold each other's hand during take-off, knowing that it's not because either is afraid of flying. They don't let go until they've reached cruising altitude, until the first drinks service has come and gone. Their shoulders finally relax during dinner.

Keith comes by to visit after the cabin lights dim. It's an overnight flight to Hong Kong, and everyone is going to try to sleep.

"Do you think I could get some time with my daughter?" Keith asks Mac, before Veronica has a chance to say hello and ask if he needs anything.

Mac looks confused, but she grabs her stuff together politely, and heads back into the economy section with a reassuring smile to Veronica.

Veronica watches her friend go. Something about her dad is making her nervous.

"Everything okay?" she asks immediately, and Keith smiles back at her tightly as if she's being predictable.

"Everything's fine," he says, taking the seat next to her and buckling himself in. Veronica feels her shoulders relax, as some of the nervous energy leaves her. "I just wanted to check in with you."

"I'm fine," she says automatically, and the way her dad smiles at her again, in the same tight, penetrating way, has her feeling on edge again.

"You're not fine," he argues. "There's no way you could be fine with all this."

Veronica shifts her weight in her seat and looks away. When she glances back her dad is still looking at her, almost expectantly.

"I've been thinking a lot about what you said," she answers for herself. "About…about what you said back at the lake, about what would happen to me if Logan was still dead at the end of all of this."

Her dad's look changes to one of calm sympathy (maybe relief?), and he nods, remembering.

"And?"

"And," she answers, "and I don't know anymore. I was fine, thinking that Logan was dead. No, I wasn't fine. But I…" she searches her feelings. "I understood it, after a while. I understood that he was dead, and I made my peace with that.

"_And now_…" she trails off, and places an unconscious hand on her belly that her dad doesn't miss. Veronica shakes her head, and hangs her head. There's nothing to say.

"And now?" he prompts, drawing her attention. "Now you get to go save his life, honey."

Veronica doesn't look like she believes him.

"It's been almost _two weeks_, dad." She looks so sad. "Who knows where he could be now. He could have survived the crash and died in the jungle. He could be in some strange village in the middle of nowhere. If he made it to a major city – then what? Then he could be anywhere." She's getting carried away, and her dad knows it too. He calms her by taking her free hand in his. It makes her realize she's worrying her lower lip.

"We'll find him," Keith insists. When she looks at him doubtfully, he opens his eyes at her. "He's Logan freaking Echolls sweetheart, how hard can it be?"

She fights with herself, and indulges her dad with a smile.

They sit in silence for a long time. Everyone around them is asleep, or has their ears covered in headphones, eyes reflecting some sort of in-flight entertainment.

Her voice is quiet. "Do you think he'll be mad at me?"

Keith reflects on that for what feels like a long time. "I don't think so honey, no."

She doesn't look convinced, and her lips twist together into a frown.

He squeezes her hand briefly. "Why would he be mad at you?"

Veronica picks nervously at the fabric covering her thighs with her free hand. "Because I didn't come looking for him sooner. Because I believed that he was dead."

Her dad thinks on that for a while, while observing his daughter for signs of hidden fears.

"I think he'll be so happy to see you, honey," he says, almost as if he's excited for their reunion himself. "And if he's not we can just leave him there," he adds, to make his daughter laugh. She does laugh, though the sound is weak and more for his benefit. They dissolve into silence.

"We don't even know where to start when we get there. He could be anywhere." Her dad doesn't say anything. "He could be dead," she insists.

"What does your gut tell you?" he asks, and the question surprises her. Veronica looks at her dad plaintively.

"My gut was wrong for eleven days," she reminds him. "My gut thought you were dead once when you weren't." Veronica's lips tighten in memory. She weighs how she feels in her mind, testing knowledge against her emotions. "Logically…I think…he could be alive. Kathy could have been right. It would certainly work with what we know already if Logan had survived. Considering what Kathy said, a dead body would have been easy to recover."

The soundness of it all is sobering. It sits like a rock in the pit of her stomach.

Veronica lets her dad hold her hand for a long time.

"I think he's alive, dad."

He squeezes her hand. "Me too, honey."

* * *

During their three-hour layover in Hong Kong's International Airport, Veronica finds herself staring at her reflection in a bathroom mirror. She'd brushed her teeth in some vain attempt to feel clean, when in reality she'd just needed to get up and move around. She couldn't sleep on the plain. Nerves rolling around in her belly prevented her from eating much.

She knows she looks pale, and it's not just because of the waxen lighting in the room. She's so tired. Veronica examines herself, wondering what she could look like from Logan's perspective. She's lost weight. The skin beneath her eyes is sallow, and if she had to give a name to her complexion it would be _ashy_. She can't help thinking that between her greasy hair and the rest of her…_what's the phrase_…she's just not a lot to come home to.

* * *

It's been 47 mostly sleepless hours when Veronica starts walking off of a plane in Yangon.

Veronica feels dirty, smelly, and wired. She knows how implausible it would be to see Logan in the airport, but a part of her is hyper alert for him as they wade through customs.

She should have been hyper alert for the uniformed officer waiting for them amidst the sea of cab drivers and tour guides past the final check point. He's holding a sign that says MARS on it like he thought it would be funny.

"Ms. Mars!" this man calls out. "I'm supposed to ask you to turn right back around and get on that plane."

There's an awkward pause, as Wallace, Mac, Veronica and Keith come to a stop in front of him. It's not like they can run at this point, and they're not sure yet if he's alone. The man laughs. "No I'm just kidding. Actually, I was sent to ask what you're doing in beautiful Myanmar and if the US government can be of any help." His voice is kind of whiny, in an an over-eager concierge sort of way. Maybe it's just because she's tired, but Veronica instinctually feels like she wants to punch him in the face. She has a dangerous feeling he would punch back.

"We're just here to pay our respects," Keith interjects, standing right behind his daughter.

The concierge man looks at them like he's concerned. "Oh, didn't you hear? The initial report was wrong. Lieutenant Echolls actually crashed outside of the South China Sea. I'm sure you heard. If you'd like I can set you up with the next direct flight to Manila? I think there's one leaving in just about an hour…"

Something it tickling the back of Veronica's neck. It's an instinct to run, to get away from this man entirely. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck are sticking up ominously.

"No thank you," she says. Unspoken is…_we don't need to play these games._

The concierge man stops looking so friendly.

"Veronica Mars," he says, and something about the way he says it lets her know this man must have looked through a very extensive background check with her name on it. The way he says it implies ownership, and she knows implicitly that he'd become familiar with her sex tape. It's a tone of voice she's heard before. "I'm not sure what you're hoping to accomplish during your visit. I can assure you the United States Navy is doing everything it can to look in to the matter of Lieutenant Echolls' death."

"Then they won't mind if we help out a little," Veronica counters.

They stare at each other for what feels like a very long minute. And then the concierge man smiles tightly.

"That is, _if_ you weren't here simply to pay your respects."

Veronica feels herself mirroring his smile. "_If_," she agrees.

The man doesn't take his eyes off Veronica as he addresses the group. "Well I hope you all enjoy your stay here in Yangon. If you can, I highly recommend the _bogyoke aung san_ market. They really do have the best _mohinga_ in town."

The man is trying to be overtly clear: _You are terribly out of your depth, little girl._

_This is my town._

* * *

The cold feelings of dread don't leave her spine right away, and Veronica is distracted as they group into a taxi and head into the center of town to pick a hotel.

They pick one because it seems to be the one with employees most likely to speak English. Their choice is confirmed when they accept US dollars for payment and exchange some of the rest Keith brought with them in-house for Myanmar kyat.

They drop off their stuff, two adjoining rooms again, but no one feels the desire to settle in. There's an unaddressed undercurrent of nervous energy flowing between them, and the minute their stuff is down they take turns showering and changing clothes with purpose.

Veronica feels it in her blood. Every unexpected noise draws her attention, as if Logan is hiding behind the dresser, or he's an employee in disguise. It makes no sense.

When everyone collects around her, she knows they're letting her decide what action to take first. They each have opinions, that much is obvious.

"What do you think, Veronica," Mac asks, her voice serious.

Veronica's breaths are insubstantial as she thinks. "I want to walk around first," she decides. "I think we should go from there."

* * *

They make a strange group, traveling through the streets of Yangon on foot. They're propositioned frequently probably because they look so lost. "_Taxi? Taxi?_" They shake their heads at the cars who try to draw their attention and keep moving.

Veronica pauses when they get to something like a town square. They've been wandering aimlessly for hours, and she knows that her friends are tired and hungry. Veronica is too nervous to be either. Her dad announces that he's going to get something to eat from the nearest street vendor, and Mac and Wallace follow him.

Veronica hangs back, standing in the shade made from an awning outside of a store. She looks behind herself, observing a tourist shop, full of knickknacks and nationalistic paraphernalia. Making up her mind impulsively, Veronica shouts for Wallace's attention and points in the store's direction when he meets her eyes. He nods and returns his attention to his food.

The store is awfully crowded inside, every available inch filled with stuff that doesn't interest her. Still, she wanders slowly, wondering what Logan would have done had he made it to Yangon himself. She thinks she's decided that they'll start the search here, and then perhaps spread out to the south if nothing pans out in the next few days. It's hard to think about that possibility. It's hard not to reach out to professionals, like the Navy, who probably have experience with this sort of thing.

They've made it very clear they have no interest in Logan Echolls anymore.

Veronica finds herself staring at a map of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. She finds the city she's in, far to the north of the country, and traces the coastline until she sees the island Kabosa. It's very, very far to the south of the country, with nothing but empty stretches of land between. He could be anywhere. He could be in another country by now.

A sickening thought occurs to her: what if he had made it back to the US all on his own? What if they had passed in the air, like proverbial ships in the night, totally oblivious to the other's travel? What if he was sitting on her dad's porch right now back in Neptune, California, and she had completely missed him.

Veronica shakes her head and closes her eyes against the imagery. He would call her then. He could find help in Neptune, where he still had friends. Here he had no one, so this is where she would be.

She picks up a guide book and flips to the index, looking for any mention of a US embassy or maybe some sort of US Navy office. It is worth a shot.

There's a huge list of consulates, and she looks at them, indulging in wonder. If she had arrived in Yangon, and she were stranded, the first thing she would do would be to try and contact her family. Failing that she would probably go to some tourist section of the city, maybe find some English-speaking hotels or hostels and appeal to them for help. If she had no money, and she were smart about it, she would go to the US consulate. That's what they were there for, right? They issued US passports should you lose one, they would represent you in a court of law should you need a lawyer while abroad.

If Logan had made it to Yangon in any sort of good health, he would have stopped there.

She turns to the page identifying the US consulate on a map, finding it kind of funny when the book opens easily to the page as if it were a common selection. She has no idea where she is in relation to the embassy though, so she walks to the front counter to ask.

A woman is sitting behind the counter looking as if she really hates her job. Veronica pegs her in her late-40's, and she's watching a TV sitting behind the register as if it's the only part of her day she does enjoy. The glossed appearance of the people on the screen make Veronica think the woman is watching a soap opera.

"Excuse me," Veronica starts to say, tilting the page in the guide book to the woman to preempt what she wants to ask.

The woman looks at Veronica's face, then her outstretched hands. Her gaze hardens on the book and she makes a loud clicking noise with her tongue.

"No!" she suddenly shouts, and Veronica is taken aback by the strength of her tone. "You buy first!" the woman insists.

Veronica frowns and twists her lips together, digging into her pocket for the bills her dad had given to her. She tries to be neutral when the woman counts the money and finds it satisfactory. The woman purses her lips when she looks at the map Veronica is pointing to, and then she clicks her tongue again. She sighs laboriously, as if helping Veronica is a huge inconvenience, and then pulls over a larger map of Yangon. She says something that sounds a lot like "Ear" while pointing to one place, and something that sounds a lot like "You Ess" as she points to another. Veronica pays the woman for the map as well and then identifies both her current location and the location of the US consulate with a nearby marker. On a final thought, she drops some coins for the pen and brings it with her as she leaves the store.

Mac, Wallace and Keith are still eating when she gets out and they look like they're in heaven.

"Hey Veronica," Wallace calls out when he sees her, even though Veronica is distracted by her maps. "We bought you something, but if you don't want it, I'll eat it, because damn if this isn't good."

She barely glances up, more to make sure she's not going to run into anything than out of interest. "I'm good," she says dismissively, and she misses the way Wallace grins excitedly.

"Whatcha got there, honey," her dad asks, having already finished eating. She walks until he can see over her shoulder and then relays their position to him.

"I think we should check in with the consulate. They'll be able to tell us whether anyone matching Logan's description has been by, or we could ask them to keep a look out in case he hasn't made it there yet."

"Sounds good," he agrees. The get in the next taxi that stops for them.

* * *

"You would not believe the number of people who try to sneak their way past us," the woman – Susan – is saying. She's a bit on the curvy side, with small, beady eyes Veronica has a hard time having any faith in.

"You should have been here after Patrick Swayze passed, may he rest in peace," she added conspiratorially. "I have to admit, that's what really got me in trouble the first time. Someone came in claiming to be him and I was about to approve his passport application before my boss intervened, thank God." She adds quietly, "I almost lost my job for that one."

Veronica nods. She's heard stranger things, but she didn't come in to talk about Patrick Swayze or Susan's job security. "Right, but, no one matching Logan Echolls' description has been in? Really?"

"_Nearly every day_," Susan opines, as if it's a personal burden. "They're never any good though. Well there was one a few days ago, but you know not really. I remember because we'd had a meeting about the Echolls situation and possible imposters that very same morning. It just happens every time after someone famous dies or goes missing; suddenly everyone thinks they're smart enough to con the system and get US citizenship." She purses her lip like they're something bitter on her tongue. "It's just sad, really."

Veronica feels herself deflating, just a little bit. This is turning into a dead-end. "Well, thanks anyway." She tries to smile. "Do you think you could let me know if any other imposters show up?" She scribbles down her phone number on a piece of paper and pushes it across the counter at Susan. Susan smiles politely.

"You know you almost look like that girlfriend of his," Susan observes, her voice wistful. "Oh she is a pretty girl though. Blonder than you, I think, maybe a few pounds lighter too."

The polite smile falls from Veronica's face. "Well," Veronica says, trying not to say something catty but wanting to very much. "Inspiration for all of us."

Susan smiles obliviously. Her shoulders perk up quickly as if she's having a pleasant afternoon as she waves Veronica off with a few fingers.

Something about Susan is bothering Veronica, and she's not sure what it is. She's halfway to the door when she stops. Her unconscious mind had been filing away Susan's information…and something suddenly sticks out.

"Hey," Veronica starts to say, turning halfway around. "That one who came in here a few days ago…he looked just like Logan Echolls huh?"

"Oh, no, not really," Susan says disparagingly. "And he was _far_ too rude to be Aaron Echolls' son."

A chill runs through her spine.

_Rude?_

"What happened to him?" she asks, and she's almost distracted by how suddenly quiet her voice is.

Susan tilts her round face, and looks at her carefully.

* * *

Veronica bursts out the front doors of the consulate and stares around wildly. She can't see Mac, Wallace or Keith, but her mind is spinning so fast it's a wonder she can see traffic.

She spots them, halfway down the block, eating ice cream in front of a kart.

They're calling out in her direction after they see her, all smiles and something or other, but she doesn't hear their words. Blood is rushing through her ears at a dizzying pace, the _swish swish swish_ sound throbbing in time with her racing heart. She stumbles toward them, trying to move as quickly as possible. She doesn't stop until she can see the whites of their eyes.

"He's in jail," she breathes.

"Haha," Keith says, taking a final bite of his pink ice cream bar and throwing away the stick. "Very funny."

"I'm not kidding!" she yells, and suddenly the smiles melt from the three faces around her. This is suddenly not an absent sojourn through a new place. Suddenly everyone's aware that they're on a very real mission with a very real target.

"…Seriously?" Mac asks, and by the way the other two people are looking at her, Veronica judges they're thinking the same.

"The woman inside," she gestures vaguely behind herself, "she said that they got a shit load of imposters. They always do when someone famous dies. But she said that just a few days ago, someone came in and was a total _dick_ to her."

She waits for everyone else to receive the information. Wallace leans back and twists his features together, about to say that rudeness isn't really an identifying quality.

"It's _him_ okay!" Veronica shouts, desperately, because deep in her heart she believes it to be true. He's in jail. Of course he's in jail. Of course Logan Echolls could make it halfway across the world, survive a plane crash, survive a marooning, and still end up incarcerated.

She feels rush after rush of emotion and they fill her up from the tip of her head to the tip of her toes.

"Let's go!" she shouts, because she's lost patience.

"Go where?" her dad counters, matching the strength of her voice. Veronica spins her head to look at him, frustration spiking through her because all she wants to do is start running. "What happened?" he asks. "What did she say exactly?"

Veronica feels her fists and her jaw tighten. She wants to tell him that it doesn't matter, that they need to move, but she knows where her innate stubbornness comes from. She screws her eyes shut and tries to clear her head for her dad's sake. But her mind is spinning and her heart is racing, like she's had too much caffeine.

"She said," Veronica tries to remember. "She said, that he tried to tell her who he was. That he gave her some information anyone could've pulled off the internet. And that she'd called in the guards at the door to kick him out because he was scaring her, but that Logan had started a fight. He – he was resisting, so the guards took him away, told her they'd take care of it."

Everyone absorbs that information for a second. Veronica exchanges penetrating glances with Wallace, and Mac, and her dad. Her friends look bewildered, like they're just desperate for some sort of instruction, but her dad is frowning.

"Wait. Was he just arrested? Or was he actually formerly charged with something, and put in jail."

"What?" Veronica asks, not really asking what he means, just using her mouth to put a word to her confusion. "I don't know. She didn't say—"

"Veronica, I was sheriff for a long time. And I know I was never sheriff in Myanmar, but we have to think this through, and rationally speaking, we should be looking through police stations, not going straight to the nearest jail and banging on someone's door."

"No—" she tries to say again, her heart squeezing inside her chest.

"What are we going to do? If he's in jail, what are we going to do about it sweetheart." He's looking at her sadly. "And what if…what if he was simply hauled into a police station, not charged with anything, and released."

Veronica realizes there are tears in her eyes. Is her dad making sense? She's not sure. Her emotions are overriding logic and rationale and she can barely think straight she feels so overwhelmed. _Logan_.

Her dad looks at her so sadly. "This is a lead, sweetheart. I don't want to mess it up."

Keith pulls his daughter into a light hug. She is stiff in his arms, not wanting to give in to him, not wanting to cede control. _Logan's in jail_, she tries to believe, but her former certainty is fading. "Let's do this right."

Veronica inhales a shuddering breath against her dad's chest. She thinks about what he says. Could he have been released? Could he be wandering around Yangon somewhere instead? Could the militia guards have taken him to some ravine and thrown him in…could they have dragged him behind the consulate and shot him in the head…

When her head sags against him, Keith knows they're both on the same page.

Mac clears her throat. When Veronica turns to look at her, she sees that Mac has the guidebook open in her hands.

"If we're going to start with the police stations, we should get going," she says. "This thing says there are at least fifty in Yangon proper alone."

Veronica pushes away from her dad's chest and takes the book from Mac, staring down at the list of police stations organized by district. Critical thinking as a skill is slowly starting to come back to her, albeit slowly.

"We'll split up," she decides.

Her dad puts his hand on the open page in front of her eyes. "No," he declares, and it's so firm a _no_ that she doesn't find it within herself to argue. She frowns.

"Fine. Well then let's go already."

The first one is just two blocks away, so they walk to its location. Veronica takes the lead with Keith at her elbow, because with Veronica's head buried in her map and trying to navigate the maze of streets she's not watching very carefully where she's going. The second time she's almost hit by a car her dad swears loudly and rips the guidebook from her hands.

"Why wouldn't someone know if Logan was in jail already?" Wallace asks from behind, and Veronica doesn't turn to answer him.

"Someone doesn't want him found," she responds, and it's sobering because it's logical.

_They'd know where we were even if we were 5,000 feet below water._ Even if Logan had lost his suit after the crash, someone would have known where he'd washed up. They could have placed a false warning at the nearest consulates: _Watch out for Logan Echolls impersonators. Logan Echolls is dead. Report any imposters to the local authorities immediately_.

It's making so much sense to her right now, and a part of her is terrified that it's only because she has so many nerves simmering in her blood, because she hasn't slept properly in days, or because she hasn't been able to stomach food since Kathy's call. Her body had felt so empty inside, and a part of her wonders whether any idea of Logan being alive would have filled her up.

Should she not be believing in this?

Veronica comes to a halt in front of the police station and bites her lip as she looks up at its sign. If she hadn't been told what this was based on the map, she never would have known, because it's a nondescript storefront with letters spelling words that mean nothing to her.

* * *

Veronica shows Logan's picture to an eighth set of eyes. They look at her phone with a pinched expression, paying attention, wanting to say something along the lines of _you shouldn't be here_ instead. This eighth man they've encountered shakes his head.

"No," he says, and Veronica takes in a shaky breath as her shoulders sag for an eighth time.

"Thanks," she says, turning off her phone. "Thanks anyway." She turns to face her dad and her friends, shaking her head sadly.

It's been three and a half hours since they've left the consulate. Three and a half hours of bleeding money through taxis, frustrated conversations in fragmented English with soldiering policemen who want nothing to do with them, and everyone's tired.

It's also getting late. The last rays of sunshine make the sky glow indigo outside, and Veronica knows they'll have to call it a night. She doesn't want the confirmation though, so she avoids making eye contact with Wallace, Mac, and her dad.

Veronica walks past them to the busy street outside the eighth police station and breathes in the fresh night air. She tries to imagine where Logan could be in that moment. The cold truth is that he could be anywhere. He doesn't have to be in prison, waiting for her.

"Let's go back to the hotel," she says, when Keith enters her peripheral vision. "We'll start again in the morning."

Her dad's lip tighten sadly, and he nods.

* * *

Veronica can't sleep. She has no idea how much she's slept in the last four days, but sleep doesn't find her now, in the dark, on her side of the room she shares with Mac.

She thinks back to the last two weeks of her life and wonders how she survived any of it. There was the haze of her despair, while she grieved for what she thought she lost. Then the panic of being found, her safety and the safety of her baby infringed. She tries to remember what she felt like before she was notified of Logan's death, how it felt simply to be pregnant and without him in her life.

Veronica curls around herself under the cold sheets, and tired tears leak from her eyes. Her face doesn't react to them anymore; they simply accumulate in her tear ducts, and then spill over, as if seeping from stone.

The vigor she felt when the cause of Logan's death was questioned; that had felt like real life. But the shock of wondering whether he was still alive…that was painful then, and it is painful now. She feels such crushing guilt in believing he was dead, and then feels so foolish when contemplating whether she believes in something that might not be true.

Veronica recalls what Mac had revealed the night before, after four weary travelers had come home with so much more work to be done.

_Mac tilts her head away from the laptop, her eyes still on the screen. "Veronica, listen to this." She starts reading from an internet browser: "Insein Prison, located outside the city borders of Yangon, is controlled by the military junta of Myanmar. Consistently cited for crimes against humanity by human rights' groups, Insein houses many notable political activists, journalists, and other alleged criminals."_

_A chill runs down Veronica's spine. It's a desperate, terrified panic thinking that Logan could be suffering._

"_Honey," her dad says, warningly, "it doesn't make any sense to go barging in there. We should check through the police stations first. They could have released him and sent him somewhere to find his way home. They could have—" he stops, pinches his lips together, and continues. "They could have done any number of things before they even thought to send him to jail indefinitely. Let's keep going with the police stations."_

_Veronica wants to agree with him. She wants to agree that Logan could very easily have been arrested, and then released, because assault on an officer was a charge she didn't want to think about, and according to Susan, Logan had accosted two._

_She agrees like a woman who wants to believe._

Consciousness fades in and out until morning, when she can see the light of day curling around the curtains. She stands then, her muscles weak. Veronica almost doesn't want to get up, and she feels barely alive. But she'd made a promise to her dad, and to her friends, that they would continue today, so she pulls herself up and out of bed and wakes up Mac in the process.

As if she'd lost a big chunk of time, Veronica suddenly finds herself in a different room, watching Wallace, Keith and Mac eat bread with butter and jam. She looks around, finding other small groups of tourists doing the same, and then takes the plate of toast as it's passed to her.

She passes it along, not wanting any, barely catching the way her dad is frowning at her. She tries to look at him seriously. "I ate earlier. I'm not hungry now. I want to get going."

_I want to get this over with_.

* * *

Veronica is the first to get out of the taxi, and she stands on the sidewalk, staring up at the building looming above her head. Her dad pays the cab driver, and her friends follow her, standing to her either side.

"You ready?" Mac asks, but Veronica doesn't turn her head to look at her friend. Is she ready for another day of disappointment? Well. It's still early yet. This is only the first of at least a few dozen such places they have to cross off their list before they move on. The air is still cold with morning, and Wallace shivers to her right, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. Veronica wonders why she doesn't feel the cold.

She takes a big step forward and walks through the open arch. It should have a door, just like the walls should have windows, but this building has neither. It's not the first such station they've seen in disrepair, and it won't be the last. This one is the farthest away from the center of town though. The linoleum floor beneath their feet is dirty and peeling, the man sitting behind the front desk looking bored and disinterested.

"Hi," Veronica says, and the way the man looks up at her makes her understand implicitly that he speaks no English. He's looks at her curiously though, as if he's not accustomed to dealing with tourists and like he's about to redirect her out of his building.

"Hi," she forges ahead, because she wants to interrupt him before he gets the courage to tell her where she wants to be instead. "I'm looking for an American. He would have been brought in five or six days ago. His name is Logan Echolls."

She takes her cellphone from the back pocket of her jeans. It snags on the denim, and when the waistband of her pants pull against her skin, she realizes they're looser than they were before. Veronica bites her lip and tilts her head down, tapping on the screen of her cell phone. Logan comes to life in her hands, and it's hard to see with the current state of her mind. She turns the phone toward the guard before she can get too caught up in the look of his face.

The guard peers at the picture within her hand, and he looks at it for a long time. He frowns, and then looks up at Veronica, and says something she doesn't understand.

"I don't—" she starts to say, even though he's talking over her. "I don't understand."

He's frowning really seriously now, and it bothers her. "Just say yes or no," she begs, pulling her phone back to her body.

The man's arm darts out and grabs her. It's so surprising she almost drops the piece of plastic she holds.

He's frowning, and his gaze is penetrating her eyes too deeply.

Veronica stops breathing. She isn't sure what to say. Fear is curling in her belly because of the way he's looking at her.

Because suddenly…she knows.

She knows that Logan has met this man.

Veronica gasps, and her voice is so small.

"You've met him," she whispers, and the man doesn't contradict her and he doesn't know how. Veronica's voice becomes louder, finds strength. "Logan was here, wasn't he."

Keith is instantly at her shoulder.

"Is this man here?" he demands to know. The Burmese man looks at Keith now, and then back at Veronica, as if he's suddenly unsure what to do. He stands from his chair and moves to leave the room, and Veronica and Keith both instinctively try to follow him. The man looks back at them with raised eyebrows, looking nervous. He shouts something in his language and motions for them to stay where they are.

Veronica and Keith don't exchange glances. They keep this man in their sights, as if he'll try to run and they'll have to chase him.

The first man comes back with a second. This second man seems already informed of the situation at hand, because he's frowning when he enters the room like he's gearing for a fight.

"You here for this man," he says. "This man no here. No here," he insists, and Veronica's blood burns in her veins.

"Oh don't give me that crap!" her dad shouts. "He's here! We all know he's here!"

The two guards look at each other. The first one is deferring to the second as if the second man is in control. They're looking more and more nervous by the second, and Veronica is growing more and more sure that they have secrets they're reluctant to tell.

"Look," Veronica tells the second guard, the one who might understand her. "I don't know who you think you have back there, but he's nothing to you." Her voice is ragged and recklessly sad.

"He is _everything_ to me."

There is a blanket of silence throughout the room. Veronica looks between the two men. "_Please_," she begs them. She wants to grab them and shake them until they understand. "_Please,_" she says again, louder, more plaintively, and even if they don't understand what she's saying, the sentiment is overtly clear.

Her dad takes in a ragged breath. He reaches into his back pocket and withdraws a small wad of Myanmar money.

"Here," he says, and he pushes the cash in the two men's direction. They look at it with interest and fear in their eyes. "Here, take it," Keith says again. "No one has to know," he reasons, and Veronica sees the way he stands, looking at the two men desperately, as if he's standing on the edge of a cliff begging for life.

"Here," he says, again, shoving the money at the men.

They exchange wordless glances, and Veronica has no idea what could be going on in their head. Her whole body yearns for them to reason with her and her mind twists her soul. She wonders whether it's really Logan they have. It could be anyone. It doesn't have to be Logan they're bargaining for, but in this moment, in the face of the mere possibility, she doesn't care. She can care later if they're wrong, if they're freeing some other American with brown hair and brown eyes.

The second man grabs the money from Keith's outstretched hand, and Keith withdraws as if he's stepping away from a mountain lion.

"We just want Logan," he says, retreating. The two men talk to each other, and Veronica feels reckless panic bloom within her. She wants to scream at them: _What are you waiting for?_ But she holds back, her lower lip caught between her teeth as they converse to themselves.

"Okay," the second man says, and he looks deeply into Veronica's eyes. "Okay," he says again, and tears rise so fast and hard in Veronica's throat she's worried she'll choke with them.

"He not here no more." The air leaves Veronica's lungs. They might as well have socked her in the belly for all the visceral effect it has on her. "We move him," the officer explains. "Move him to Insein. He go bye bye long time. Four days there already."

Veronica doubles over, and tries to breathe.

"I knew it," she whispers, her voice completely raw. "I knew it," she says again, arms snaking around her chest to protect her vital organs. "I told you he was in prison!" she wails, because she's mad at her dad and her friends because it's their fault Logan had to spend another night there.

"Shh," her dad says, and as always he sees right through her. "It's okay honey. We're going. We're going now." He puts his arms around her and tugs her toward the door. They move like that until they're in the street, hailing any car that will stop.

She can't make eye contact with anyone. Her mind is a dangerous place, and it is hurling scenario after scenario at her. Veronica finally has to close her eyes against the imagery. Everyone else in the taxi is loud as the sedan speeds through traffic.

Is Logan dead, at this prison they're going to? How could she possibly free him if was still alive?

There are no options available to her. The US Navy will be of no help. The consulate for now does not seem inclined.

She remembers the man who met them at the airport with chilling ease. She has a feeling the US Navy would be more than willing to throw their weight around to ensure Logan stayed underground, metaphorically or literally. Her eyes squeeze shut as she tries not to think of Logan dead anymore.

It doesn't matter, she decides. What matters now is having Logan safe. What is terrifying to her is that she imagines they have one shot at this. If he is still alive, and if he is still in this prison…how many times can they appeal for his release without drawing attention? What can they do?

Whatever her thoughts, Veronica knows that the car can't move fast enough. She feels Logan getting closer with every passing minute, and in her soul she is so desperate simply to see him. Veronica thinks that even if she got to see him one more time that might be enough. But those are weak thoughts, she decides. Strength is needed of her now. So her hands curl against her thighs, and she closes her eyes and _thinks_.

More than once someone tries to draw her attention. The three people she travels with are talking over one another, periods of silent disbelief and panicked unease splitting their conversation. Veronica doesn't engage, and she doesn't listen. She _thinks_.

By the time the taxi has crossed town, and the driver has confirmed for the fourth time that this is where they want to go, Veronica is the first one out of the car.

Her friends follow her out, and one glance to her face shows them conversation is unnecessary. Her dad tries to detain her, but Veronica pulls her phone from her back pocket, and walks purposefully through the front door.

The walls here have windows and doors, and there are a few chairs in the foyer to accompany the front desk. The linoleum is still dirty though. The man who is stationed at this desk looks as if there is nothing left in this world to shock him.

Veronica squares her shoulders when she sees him. She taps her phone, Logan's picture glowing in her hand, and strides over to him with purpose.

"We want this man," she demands.

The guard looks at her blandly. Clearly he had seen many things more interesting than Veronica Mars in his life. His fingernails, perhaps. His gun. A blond, raggedy looking American with an entourage meant nothing to him.

He looks at the picture on the phone Veronica is thrusting into his face, and grimaces at its intrusion. With a laborious sigh, he makes a quick decision and stands from his desk. This is above his pay grade. He starts to walk away, and when no one follows him immediately he has to look over his shoulder and shout at them to follow.

Mac, Wallace and Keith exchange nervous glances as they follow Veronica and the guard. She would be considered "unhinged" if she weren't so clearly on auto pilot. The guard leads them through a series of hallways, the dirty linoleum looking cleaner with every step. They are getting farther away from the prisoners, Veronica deduces. They are getting farther away from Logan.

Eventually the guard stops in front of a door. He gives a warning look to Veronica's group and then knocks on and opens the piece of wood. Keith takes the moment to look around. There aren't any other people close by, and they're at the end of a long hallway. Escape would be unlikely if this adventure were to end poorly. He doesn't like the feeling, but he stops himself from complaining to his daughter. Keith is sure Veronica is oblivious to anything but the task at hand. Muttered voices are coming from inside the room.

"Should I even ask if we have a plan?" Keith feels the need to say out loud. Veronica ignores him. Mac and Wallace do not.

The door opens in front of them. It's the same bored guard as before, and he looks no more entertained by the four of them now. He walks past without comment, leaving the door to the room open behind him as some form of invitation.

Veronica takes a steady breath.

"Look tough," is the only instruction she gives them, before she takes the first step inside.

Keith looks stoically at Mac and Wallace, who look confused for a second. When Keith shrugs, Wallace and Mac try to follow Veronica's command as they follow.

The office is larger than it looked from the outside, and overstuffed. Large, ornately carved dark wooden furniture fills most of the room, with elaborately stitched tapestries filling any gap in wall space.

A man is standing behind a solid wood desk against the back wall. He is grinning at them, almost pleasantly, as if they've come in with his dinner.

He is balding on top, with thin hair combed back away from his overlarge forehead.

"Come in," he invites, in nearly perfect English. He gestures to the collected chairs in front of his desk. It doesn't go unnoticed by anyone that there are four, one for each of them. This room is clearly in this man's control.

Veronica walks in with her hand outstretched. "Natalie Forbes, your honor, it is so nice to finally meet you." The man takes her outstretched hand. "Everyone at the FBI speaks so highly of you."

The man with thin hair takes Veronica's hands with widening eyes. He still smiles.

"The FBI!" he says, clearly a little surprised by the turn this meeting has taken. "It has been a long time since the FBI has taken an interest in our little operation."

Veronica releases his hand to gesture at her associates. "I apologize for our lack of dress," she says, her voice sounding strong and confident. "Training mission." She makes apologetic eyes at him. "This is agent McAllister, Honda and Shafer."

Wallace is trying not to look impressed by his friend's ability to think on her feet. He wonders which one he is, and decides he's Honda. _Look tough_, he thinks to himself, setting his face in a careful frown. Life is never boring with Veronica Mars for a friend.

Veronica folds herself into the chair most directly across from this man.

"Thiha Zeya," he introduces himself, shaking Keith and Wallace's hands. "I run things around here, but you know that already or you wouldn't be here." Mac gets a small nod, as she's already seated to Veronica's left. Wallace and Keith take the remaining two chairs to Veronica's right, and Thiha finally sits down.

"So to what do I owe the pleasure?" he starts by asking. Veronica looks at him tightly, unruffled by his confidence.

"Logan Echolls," she says. Her voice doesn't tremble when she says his name. She almost drops the _ess_ sound, as if to imply unfamiliarity. "I believe he's in your care, and unfortunately we need him back."

Thiha examines her for a long time. Too long.

"Well that's inconvenient," he says. It's awful confirmation, and Veronica feels it burn under her skin. Her stomach sinks, and she fights not to cry.

"And curious," Thiha continues. "The US government gave us specific instructions to do whatever we want with him."

Veronica shifts in her seat, the information swimming in her mind, trying to distract her. _Look tough_. "And I'm sure you did," she agrees, flatteringly. "But you know how we love to change our minds. The Navy needs him. I've been sent by Johnston specifically."

Thiha frowns with his eyes. The look of recognition she was expecting, maybe the look of being impressed…she doesn't get any of that. Name dropping Skip Johnston isn't going to get her anything with Thiha Zeya.

"Well I'm not so sure I can let him go so easily," Thiha finally says. "I mean, he's been improving our English. _Kiss my ass_ is a new favorite phrase among my guards."

Wallace chuckles before he can help it. Mac sends him a punishing glare.

Veronica smiles. "He is well known for his tongue, your honor," she says. Thiha's lips flatten, as if he finds her innuendo unnerving. Veronica finds it unnerving herself.

He steeples his index fingers in front of his lips, and then tilts them in Keith's direction. "Let me see if I have this right. Shafer, is it?" Keith nods, a tiny, polite smile on his face. Thiha points at Mac now. "McAllister?" Mac doesn't smile. She nods her head. "Forbes…" Thiha says, glossing over Veronica, who doesn't respond. "And, forgive me, Shonda?"

"Honda," Wallace corrects, but his grin is a little too eager, and when Veronica sees it the corners of her lips tighten.

"Right…" Thiha says. "_Honda_." He's trying it out against his tongue. Veronica doesn't like this tiny exercise of his. It feels duplicitous, and it makes her nervous.

"You're good with names," she observes, drawing Thiha's attention back to herself. Thiha nods, his grin wide.

"Names and faces," he returns. Three seconds pass by in silence while Veronica and Thiha stare at each other.

"You wouldn't mind if I asked to see your badges again?" Thiha asks, and Veronica's breath silently sticks in her throat. He hadn't asked a first time.

"Not at all," she counters easily. "But unfortunately, training exercise," she says as if it's any explanation. "Feel free to call someone if you need to though, to confirm our identities."

Thiha considers this for a long moment. He makes a playful lunge for the phone that makes everyone titter with laughter. Finally, he smiles at them.

"I want one hundred thousand US dollars."

The air in his office stills.

Veronica doesn't dare move a muscle.

Finally, she swallows against her dry throat. "That can be arranged," she says.

"Oh," Thiha says as if she misunderstood. "I meant now."

Veronica's eyes tighten ever so slightly.

"You know we're good for it," she says, her voice flat.

"Do I?" Thiha questions. "I mean, you have no identification. You have no paperwork. What's to prevent me from getting an angry call tomorrow morning asking what I did with the mouthy American citizen?"

The muscles in Veronica's jaw clench.

"You'll get your money," she says again. _Give me Logan_.

Thiha considers this for a moment.

"Do you know what I think?" he asks, rhetorically, because he's clearly not about to wait for their response. "I think I don't give a fuck who you are. I don't give a fuck what you want or why you want it." He's dropped his smile now, and he looks across the four faces in front of him in turn. "I give a fuck about getting paid."

"We don't have that much on us," Keith blurts. Veronica looks at him curiously. She knows her dad doesn't have that much _period_.

Mac sighs and moves on Veronica's other side. The girl leans forward, reaches into her back pocket, and pulls out a giant wad of Myanmar kyat. She pauses to look into Veronica's eyes, and then she pulls off her left shoe, tilts it toward herself, and shakes another wad into her waiting palm. She drops both onto Thiha's desk.

"That should do it," she says, and Mac leans back in her chair. No one moves.

"Oh fine," Mac adds, before she digs down the front of her shirt. She winces as her fingers scoop into the left cup of her bra and she pulls out a third wad of cash. "Take it all," she says, adding the bills to Thiha's desk.

Clearly, no one had expected this from Agent McAllister.

Thiha picks up the slightly moist cash and counts it superficially.

"It's not enough," he declares.

"C'mon man," Mac argues, a little too flippantly. "Consider it a down payment."

Thiha looks at her sharply. Clearly no one has called him _man_ in a long time.

"Come back tomorrow with the rest and I'll decide."

Now Keith sighs, and it draws Veronica's attention when all she wants to do is start threatening Thiha's life.

He looks at his daughter as if she really, _really_ owes him one, and then he starts unlacing his right shoe. He slips the sneaker off his heel, sticks his fingers inside, and pulls out a huge wad of hundred dollar bills. Veronica vaguely recognizes it, remembering the stash she'd seen in her dad's wallet back in Death Valley.

"Take it or leave it," her dad says to Thiha, dropping the cash into the pile. He looks like his old self, his sheriff self, and Veronica fights the burn of affectionate tears.

"We're not coming back tomorrow," Keith explains. "Tomorrow it makes more sense to move on without the Echolls kid. This is a one-time deal. Either you take this cash now and let him go, or we leave and never see you again."

Thiha clearly wasn't expecting this. _He_ looks ruffled, and he's making quick decisions about whether or not to call their bluff in his head. But Veronica sees him counting the money in front of him with his dark eyes.

How much is there – a new car's worth? A gambling debt's worth? Veronica's sure she has no idea, but she's sure Thiha has already started spending the money in his head.

Is that small pile of money worth Logan's life to this man? What is Logan's life worth to her?

What she said to the policemen back in town reverberates in her head. _Everything_. He is worth everything to her.

"You aren't the FBI," Thiha deduces, looking at the money, and then looking at Veronica. "Are you."

Veronica takes a deep breath, but doesn't respond. She remains neutral.

Thiha grimaces and shakes his head.

"Oh, what the hell," he decides. "Why not."

The words echo throughout Veronica's empty brain. _Why not. Why not. Why not._

She suddenly feels sick to her stomach. The muscles in her abdomen clench as if preparing for a punch, or preparing to help her vomit – Veronica isn't sure.

Thiha picks up the phone on his desk and punches in a number. He says something in his own language, leaned back in his chair, picking something invisible off his thighs. He listens, and gives instructions, and laughs. He returns the phone to its cradle, stands, and leans across his desk to collect the money.

When Veronica and company don't move immediately, Thiha looks at them expectantly.

"Well?" he asks, prompting. "Go on! Go take your precious lover of ass kisses."

Keith is the first to find the strength to stand. He looks Thiha in the eye as he reaches for his daughter.

"C'mon," he says. Clearly, they're all in shock.

"C'mon Veronica," he says again, and Thiha examines him coldly. Keith recognizes his mistake a moment too late. Thiha doesn't say anything. Wallace and Mac stand too, as Keith pulls on Veronica's arm to move her. She follows limply.

They move en masse into the hallway, Wallace leading the way. He seems to know where he's going so no one questions him, as stuttering steps grow surer, and feet start to move faster the dirtier the floor beneath them becomes.

Finally the hallway opens up into a room with an empty desk and a door leading outside.

"He could be calling it off by now," Mac gasps. "Shit! That was all the cash I had!"

Her dad is breathing hard. "I'll pay you back," he says, though no one believes him.

Mac, Wallace and Keith can't stand still, and they hover around Veronica like over-protective ants, unsure whether they should be running or not. Veronica sees Thiha's face in her head, glaring at them, recognizing that they'd played him, unsure what to do with such information. She should have given him more money. She should have brought fake badges. She should have better prepared for the knowledge that Logan was imprisoned here, because she is starting to hyperventilate with the knowledge that she could have come so close and fucked it up somehow, and tears are choking her from within with fear. It's a fear that she will see him, or she won't, she has no idea, but it's so consuming the three other bodies around her fade. She doesn't hear them anymore, even though they sometimes say her name, they pace through her field of vision as their hearts beat, and their lungs work to prepare them for anything.

There's a commotion coming from a door set into the back wall.

Everyone turns to face it, not knowing what to expect. They wonder – could they be arrested? Could they be killed for this? Could they really believe Logan could be coming to them, as if it was so simple all along?

The doors swing open. Two Myanmar guards in uniform are walking inside the room, pulling a third, sagging human being between them.

And Veronica gasps.

And it is such a quiet noise, that even though Wallace, Mac and Keith don't recognize who this third person is, Veronica does, so they know it's Logan.

Veronica bites down hard on her lower lip and the rest of the world fails to matter.

The light glows so brightly around him, that it is a wonder she is able to see through the tears in her eyes.

Logan stumbles between the men in uniform, his feet having a hard time finding solid ground. The guards drop him too suddenly, and Logan falters as he flinches away from them, trying to stand. She sees him notice they're not even looking at him. The guards are looking at her, and Veronica only has eyes for him. Logan spins slowly, away from them, and she's privy to the moment he recognizes her in this world.

His entire face sags open wide, shock and disbelief in his eyes.

Veronica tries to smile in some half-witted attempt to convince him she's real.

Her throat doesn't feel as if it's going to be capable of speech, but she opens her mouth anyway, because she has to. "If I have to bail you out of jail one more time," she threatens, and it's so quiet and weak a gesture that Logan's eyes widen with the truth of her. His shoulders sag. His weight shifts to his other foot, and then his feet take one stumbling step toward her. Tears brim around Veronica's eyelids, threatening to spill over. And then Logan takes another step. He stumbles toward her as if lost in a dream.

Tears pour over her cheeks. His skin is almost gray where it is not covered with dirt, and her heart squeezes so tightly inside her chest because she is so, grievously sorry.

_Logan_, she wants to cry out, but her teeth stick together as her whole body caves in on itself inside with the knowledge that he is real, that he is here, and that he is alive. Logan is absorbing her face with fear in his gaze, and she is too weak to break the contact. And just as she is about to find strength to reach out to him with her arms and he is so close she could catch him, Logan sinks to his knees before her. Veronica gasps, and Logan's arms snake around her waist, and he cradles his head against her belly and Veronica cries, oh she cries, she cries and cries and cries.

His grip on her slowly tightens as if he's slowly convincing himself that she's real. Veronica feels her shoulders shake as she laughs so weakly through such strong tears. Her voice can't make words anymore, her arms can't move from where they lay against his back. _Surely this is real life_. Logan grips her in a way that's almost painful, and then his head turns and he kisses her stomach through her shirt. He kisses her again, softly, just above his last.

He moves so smoothly up her body, and before she's able to recover from him his hands are on either side of her neck and her chin is tipped up and his lips slide against hers. It's such a fluid movement, as if everything inside his soul is flowing into hers, and they twist together as if finding one another for real. They kiss gently. They kiss again and can't pull away. The tears fall unbidden from her closed eyes, and Veronica doesn't care because they are thankful tears. Her whole body is sagged, her arms limp under the epic weight of missing him, as their lips barely touch. Veronica's hands elevate against gravity and rest against his arms, and they both melt into their embrace. Oblivion surrounds them as they give thanks to one other.

"Veronica," Logan finally says, and he's kissing her, and his voice is sad and longing all at once.

"I'm here," she responds, and his lips are on her forehead and her fingers are curling into his shirt and he feels too far away even though he's in her arms.

Tears billow from her eyes and her voice breaks as she says, "I missed you," because it's too simplistic a phrase to encompass all that she's been through. And Logan laughs tightly and he's crying too as he says "I missed you too," because his soul echoes hers and he sees her too deeply.

"I'm pregnant," she says, and it just falls from her lips and she's crying really hard now because it is all so crushingly real. She doesn't know how he'll respond but he just cradles her head in both his large hands and simply says, "I know."

Veronica gasps; it's the last thing she expected him to say, but Logan kisses her full on the mouth and she decides not to ask him inane questions like how or what he knows because he's kissing her with such joy. Such infectious joy. So she laughs though she cries and when he pulls back to look at her she tells him he smells awful. And Logan laughs back and again says, "I know."

They are staring in amazement at each other, because their story is amazing, and it amazing that they're together again.

"Wanna get out of here?" he asks quietly, and Veronica nods, and she looks to the people who came with her.

Logan sees them for the first time, and he's blown away to recognize Keith, and Mac, and Wallace. They looks like his fan club after all, but he realizes that they're here for Veronica, not him, and again he wonders what he did to make this absurdly wonderful girl love him.

"Hey guys," he acknowledges weakly, not letting go of Veronica for a second. They nod weakly back, and Logan tries not to stare because Mac and Keith are rubbing at their eyes. He looks back down at Veronica, and finds her staring up at him. He wants to kiss her again. He feels almost crippled with gratitude, inadequacy, and gut-wrenching love. He tries to smile, but it is hard to do at the moment. So he kisses her forehead again and whispers, "Let's go."

* * *

**TBC. I have lost count of how many drafts of this chapter exist on my computer. To me, it doesn't feel perfect, but maybe it never will. Thank you, thank you, thank you for continuing to read this story. I hope this lives up to your expectations even in some small way. Please please please let me know what you think, and _thank you_ again for reading.**


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